Wolverine's Original Role In X-Men: Apocalypse, And Why It Changed

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for X-Men: Apocalypse. If you have not yet had a chance to see the film, and don’t wish for any specifics to be revealed, please click away to another one of our wonderful articles!

To date, Hugh Jackman has reprised his role as Wolverine in every single movie with the word X-Men in it, and the newly released X-Men: Apocalypse doesn’t break that tradition. Instead, he is a key part of one of the movie’s biggest action sequences, seen released from the Weapon X program and killing a large number of dudes. What you probably don’t know, however, is that there were versions of the script that gave him a much larger role – however, his part was decreased in part because it stole some of the spotlight from Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of sitting down with X-Men writer/producer Simon Kinberg at the X-Men: Apocalypse press day in London, and it was during the interview that the filmmaker revealed the role that Wolverine almost had in the new blockbuster. Discussing Hugh Jackman’s history with the franchise and his developing part in the latest sequel, Kinberg explained,

There was always a notion that we wanted Wolverine to be in the movie. We wanted to find a way to feature him in the film, partly because Bryan [Singer] and I love Hugh [Jackman] so much. We love the character, obviously, and he’s such a huge part of the franchise. There were a lot of iterations of how Wolverine would enter and exit the movie. There was a version when he was going to come in at the midpoint of the film and be like the drill sergeant for the kids and take over as their leader. And we felt like that stepped on Jen’s role in the movie and becoming their leader.

With that idea off the table, and Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg still wanting to find some way to get Wolverine into the action, they continued to think about ways to get him into X-Men: Apocalypse’s script. Eventually they figured it out:

As we were, again, conceptually brainstorming the script, we knew that the kids were going to be abducted, or that a lot of our main characters were going to be abducted and taken somewhere. So we thought it would be interesting to take them to Alkali Lake, and that they would naturally, potentially… that the Weapon X program would be there, and maybe that was a place to find Wolverine.

As for how Wolverine himself ended up in the Weapon X program following the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, you can actually get the full story on that RIGHT HERE.

Would you have liked to see Wolverine take a larger role in X-Men: Apocalypse, or were you satisfied with the amount of screentime he was given? Hit the comments below with your thoughts!

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.