Tom Hardy Almost Made a Young Wolverine Movie With Matthew Vaughn

The X-Men are no strangers to alternate universes. At the end of Days of Future Past, they basically rewrote their franchise’s history so that they could tell new stories with familiar characters. (Hence the upcoming Dark Phoenix, doing a new version of the same concept as X-Men: The Last Stand.)

Interestingly, a very similar scenario played out in Hollywood as Fox was developing the younger X-Men franchise. Matthew Vaughn directed X-Men: First Class, with James McAvoy as the young Professor X and Michael Fassbender as the young Magneto, then Bryan Singer returned to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. But if Vaughn had his way, things would have turned out very differently for Marvel’s mutants.

He explained his original vision to Coming Soon:

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 ... 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!’

Fox executives, in their infinite wisdom, decided they didn’t want a Tom Hardy Wolverine movie and instead went straight into Days of Future Past (which, to be fair, was a good concept that turned into a good movie). Vaughn’s point was that there was basically no topping the combined casts and epic stakes of Days of Future Past, and if you’ve seen Apocalypse you know he might have had a point.

I guess it’s weird to make a “young” Wolverine movie, since the character doesn’t age thanks to his mutant healing abilities. Still, that sounds like a really intriguing combination of actor and character. Now that a few years have passed and Hugh Jackman has retired as the character, can we get Hardy as regular old Wolverine? I know he’s already Venom now, but c’mon. Better yet, how about Hardy plays Venom and Wolverine in the same movie? Venom v Wolverine: Dawn of Clawstice. That has blockbuster written all over it.

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