SEPTEMBER 2000
It was way back in 2000 that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine first graced our cover, just before the release of the original X-Men film. The landscape for superhero movies was very different back then: we reported that Marvel had been struggling for years to get films made. “Producers seemed to be lining up Marvel’s creations in development hell,” we wrote. (Deadpool was still a way away — though producer Lauren Shuler Donner rather prophetically noted that “there’s a million stories in the X-Men world… we very much see it as a franchise”.)
Jackman, for his part, recalled winning the role the day before his 31st birthday, and thinking, “I wish I’d read X-Men. What’s the character’s name again?” But even back then, he recognised it as a pretty big deal. “There’s a responsibility playing Wolverine,” he told us. Could he have known he’d still be in the role, a quarter of a century later?