A Mission: Impossible Star Was Cast as X-Men’s Wolverine Before Hugh Jackman

In 2000, the summer box office was dominated by marquee names like Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible II), Russell Crowe (Gladiator), and George Clooney (The Perfect Storm). But American audiences would come to learn another name: Hugh Jackman, the then-unknown Australian actor cast as the metal-clawed mutant Wolverine in X-Men. The Fox adaptation of the Marvel comic book featured veteran thespians Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor Charles Xavier and villain Magneto, respectively, leading a cast that included rising stars Halle Berry as Storm, James Marsden as Cyclops, and Rebecca Romijn as Mystique.

When the Bryan Singer-directed X-Men stormed into theaters on July 14, 2000, its $57.5 million opening weekend surpassed industry expectations. At the time, X-Men marked the biggest opening of a movie in July in history, and held the record for the highest grossing non-sequel, non-holiday opening, going on to gross nearly $300 million worldwide against a relatively low budget of $75 million. Its $21.4 million opening day was also the third-best at the time, behind only 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace ($28.5 million) and 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($21.6 million).

2000’s X-Men opened just below the $57.9 million of Mission: Impossible II, which scored the biggest opening of the year when it opened over Memorial Day weekend. John Woo’s sequel pit Impossible Missions Force Agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) against a rogue IMF agent played by Dougray Scott, who had been cast as Wolverine in X-Men a year before the two movies became the biggest summer box office hits of 2000.

The Scottish actor — at the time known for roles in the 1997 British film Twin Town and the 20th Century Fox-released romance Ever After: A Cinderella Story — was cast in the summer of 1999, when Scott was filming M:I 2. According to a Variety article announcing Scott’s casting as the X-Man, Scott signed a deal with a sequel option and was expected to begin filming X-Men as soon as filming wrapped on Mission: Impossible in September 1999.

Tom Rothman, then president of 20th Century Fox, described Scott as “ferocious” in Twin Town and was quoted saying that the Mission: Impossible villain had the edge to play the anti-hero Wolverine, who was gruffer than clean-cut Cyclops (Marsden) but with a soft spot for fellow outsider Rogue (Anna Paquin).

Scott was the latest X-Men cast member to be announced after Stewart and McKellen (who, as it happens, had passed on playing Mission Commander Swanbeck in M:I 2, a cameo role that ultimately went to Anthony Hopkins). Variety reported at the time that the VFX-heavy film was casting newcomers to keep the budget reasonable, including wrestler Tyler Mane, who played the growling Sabretooth as Wolverine’s counterpart in Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

But by October 1999, Variety reported that Scott was facing an impossible mission of his own: dropping out of the Wolverine role in X-Men. The actor couldn’t claw his way out of Mission: Impossible II, as production had run longer than expected and Scott suffered a shoulder injury. According to the report, Paramount and Fox brass worked to have Scott finished with M:I 2 in time to film X-Men, but noted the latter was “too big a movie and too big a role for Fox to be uncertain any longer. They need Scott in the Wolverine suit by Oct. 18 and if that can’t be guaranteed, Fox will recast by week’s end.” (Wolverine was the star of the X-Men ensemble, a newcomer to Xavier’s mutant team that already included the likes of Marsden’s Cyclops, Berry’s Storm, and Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey.)

Just days after that report, it was announced that Jackman — an unknown Australian actor who had headlined Oklahoma! in London and was named Australian star of 1999 — had replaced Scott in landing the coveted role. “Fox was forced to replace Scott when it became apparent last week that he wouldn’t be able to extricate himself from Paramount’s Mission: Impossible 2 in time to don his tights as Wolverine,” reads a Variety article dated Oct. 11, 1999.

Singer’s first choice to play Wolverine was Russell Crowe, who passed on the role (having just done Gladiator). He then recommended fellow Aussie Jackman. Viggo Mortensen had previously passed on the role, which had reportedly been linked to such actors as Keanu Reeves, Mel Gibson, and the Fox-favored Gary Sinise. Other actors also in consideration: Angela Bassett (who would later join the Mission: Impossible franchise) for Storm, Rachael Leigh Cook for Rogue, Terence Stamp for Xavier, and Jim Caviezel, who was originally set to play Cyclops before dropping out over his own scheduling conflicts.

“Tom Rothman really wanted Dougray Scott to play Wolverine,” X-Men screenwriter David Hayter told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “He was shooting Mission: Impossible 2 and Tom Cruise kept calling Byran and saying, ‘We just need him a little while longer, a little while longer.’ We were starting to shoot and Wolverine was the lead and we didn’t have him.”

Hayyer continued, “Bryan suspected something was hinky, and so he sent the costume designer down to Australia, ostensibly to get wardrobe shots, but really it was to find out what was going on. What we found out was Dougray had been in a motorcycle accident filming the climax of MI2. He was pretty messed up. It was a real shame he couldn’t do it. And Hugh had been somebody who had been in the mix earlier and it was [executive producer] Lauren Shuler Donner who said, ‘Why don’t we bring him?’”

When asked about missing out on a franchise Marvel role for his one-off appearance in Mission: Impossible II, Scott told The Telegraph in 2020, “That one was out of my control. Tom Cruise didn’t let me do it. We were doing Mission: Impossible and he was like, ‘you’ve got to stay and finish the film,’ and I said, ‘I will, but I’ll go and do [X-Men] as well.”

“For whatever reason he said I couldn’t,” Scott said. “He was a very powerful guy. Other people were doing everything to make it work. I love what Hugh did with it. He’s a lovely guy.”

X-Men made Jackman into an A-list star. He would go on to play Wolverine in another nine films between 2003’s X2 and 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, including a Wolverine spinoff trilogy (2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 2013’s The Wolverine, and 2017’s Logan).

Now a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jackman’s Wolverine is rumored to appear as part of Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, with the former announcing an ensemble cast that includes characters from the Fox-made X-Men movies: Professor X (Stewart), Magneto (McKellen), Cyclops (Marsden), Mystique (Romijn), Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), and Beast (Kelsey Grammer). Meanwhile, the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise will “X” out when the eighth and final installment, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, hits theaters on May 23.