Hugh Jackman has tipped Channing Tatum to take over as Wolverine when the Australian actor finally steps down from the role of the adamantium-clawed superhero.
Jackman, who is promoting new X-Men movie, Days of Future Past, was asked who might be a decent replacement for himself as the invulnerable mutant. “I don’t know who could play him. Channing Tatum could probably play him,” he said.
The Australian actor said it was inevitable that another actor would eventually be cast by studio 20th Century Fox, which owns the screen rights to all of Marvel’s X-Men comic book heroes. “They won’t retire it, though, I can tell you that right now. One hundred per cent,” he said.
Jackman admitted in September that he would be unlikely to play the part for longer than one more movie. The 45-year-old has starred as Wolverine in six films, stretching back to 2000’s X-Men, but he said it took him some time to get inside the role.
“I’ve got to admit, when I took on the role, I was 30 but I think I needed to be 40 before I really got it,” he said. “Now I feel like, ‘This guy’s 200 [years old].’ I’m enjoying it more now than I ever have, that’s for sure.”
X-Men: Days of Future Past combines cast members from the original X-Men trilogy, which hit screens between 2000 and 2006, and the 2011 prequel film X-Men: First Class, which rewound the story back to the 1960s. The new film, directed by series stalwart Bryan Singer, stars Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Based on a comic book that imagined a dystopian future in which mutants are incarcerated in internment camps, it opens in UK cinemas on May 22 and in US multiplexes the following day.
Tatum won rave reviews for his turn in Steven Soderbergh’s semi-autobiographical 2012 drama Magic Mike, a film that helped catapult him into the Hollywood A-list. The 33-year-old was named the second-highest-earning actor in the world last year by Forbes magazine. He will next appear in comedy sequel 22 Jump Street, followed by the new science-fiction epic from The Matrix’s Wachowski siblings, Jupiter Ascending.
