There has been a small fan campaign online to get New Zealand actor Antony Starr into the mix to play Logan aka Wolverine in the Marvel Studios reboot of the X-Men franchise.
While promoting the second season of Amazon’s The Boys, Antony spoke to Screen Greek where he revealed an interest in playing the berserker mutant if the opportunity knocked after being asked which X-Men character he’d like to play.
STARR: “I would say Wolverine!”
“Big shoes to fill, man. Jackman’s pretty much put his mark on that, hasn’t he? So, I never say never, man – but at the moment, I’m just enjoying what we’re doing here. I mean, to be honest, Wolverine doesn’t wear spandex, which is definitely a negative for me. I do like the feel of tight pants, you know, if they can tighten the jeans up, maybe.”
“We can get some kind of tight leather jeans going on – or maybe a pants suit. I could be tempted – but I’m just happy to be doing what I’m doing, brother, and whatever comes, comes. I appreciate the fans, you know. We’ve got a great bunch of fans and they’re really enthusiastic and passionate, so, I love their ideas and their support. I hope they enjoy Season Two of The Boys and I’m just stoked we get a chance to do Season Three as well.”
The actor currently plays Homelander on the satirical superhero series The Boys, an extremely dark take on the Superman archetype. His co-star and fellow Kiwi, Karl Urban, just happened to play Skurge The Executioner in Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok directed by Taika Watititi.
Season 2 of The Boys drops on September 4th on Amazon Prime Video and they’ve already announced Season 3 is moving forward.
Antony isn’t the role actor being suggested by fans.
There has been relentless effort to have Kingsman actor Taron Egerton considered for the role which the actor has downplayed in various interviews over the last two years.
Taron has a connection to former Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, as they co-starred together in the sports comedy Eddie The Eagle. He called the persistent Wolverine rumors “flattering” while chatting with GQ recently but, yet again, downplayed their validity.
EGERTON: “That anyone thinks I would be good for the part is really flattering. I love Marvel, but it’s just fan stuff. There is no grounding for those rumours.”
Speaking of Hugh, he had voiced his support for Mad Max: Fury Road actor Tom Hardy to take over the role before he eventually was cast as Sony’s Eddie Brock aka Venom.
Last year, X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn revealed to Coming Soon he wanted to cast a younger version of Wolverine with Tom Hardy for a film that would take place between First Class and X-Men: Day of Future Past.
VAUGHN: “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t continue because they didn’t listen to me. My plan was First Class, then the second film was new young Wolverine in the 70s to continue those characters, my version of the X-Men. So you’d really get to know all of them, and my finale was gonna be Days of Future Past. That was gonna be my number three where you bring them all… because what’s bigger than bringing in McKellen and Michael and Stewart and James and bringing them all together?”
“When I finished the Days of Future Past script with it ready to go I looked at it and said, ‘I really think it would be fun to cast Tom Hardy or someone as the young Wolverine and then bring it all together at the end’. Fox read Days of Future Past and went ‘Oh, this is too good! We’re doing it now!’. And I said, ‘Well what do you do next? Trust me you’ve got nowhere to go’. Then they did Apocalypse and it’s like… If you flip that round even it would have been better. Hollywood doesn’t understand pacing. Their executives are driving 100 miles-per-hour looking in the rear-view mirror and not understanding why they crash.”
Hardy is very unlikely to be considered given his current role in the Venom franchise.
Marvel Studios is currently dealing with a backlog of film and television projects after the Coronavirus pandemic paused multiple productions globally, combined with previous hints from Marvel’s Kevin Feige that they’re not in any rush to make a new X-Men film anytime soon.
A Fantastic Four reboot is rumored to be the first former Fox property that they’ll be building a film around. However, neither a director nor a screenwriter has been announced.
SOURCE: SCREEN GEEK
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