X-Men: First Class director and X-Men producer Matthew Vaughn had a very different kind of vision for Wolverine in X-Men: Days of Future Past. In fact, he wanted to replace Hugh Jackman with Tom Hardy as a younger version of the character.
Vaughn shared this vision for Wolverine during an interview with ComingSoon saying:
“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.”
Vaughn went on to explain that the reason he stepped away from directing anymore X-Men films is because the studio didn’t listen to him or take his advice. He also shared his plan for the trilogy saying:
“That’s one of the reasons I didn’t continue, because they didn’t listen to me. My plan was First Class, then second film was new young Wolverine in the 70’s 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?”
It would have actually been pretty interesting to have the second film center on a younger version of Wolverine played by Hardy. Don’t get me wrong, I freakin’ love Hugh Jackman in the role, but it’s still interesting and fun to think about what could have been had Fox actually did what Vaughn wanted to do.
What do you all think about the filmmaker’s initial plan for the X-Men franchise? Would you have liked to see a new Wolverine introduced? As long as we still would have ended up getting Logan, I would have been fine with it. But if we would have had to sacrifice Logan for a new Wolverine… no way.