You know the drill: headlines with question marks tend to be speculative at best, but how much fun is it to speculate about a massive Marvel team-up involving Wolverine, Spider-Man and the Avengers? That's a work Christmas party right there.
Rights issues notwithstanding - and as any lawyer will tell you, there very much are withstanding - the idea struck a real chord with Hugh Jackman when Collider pitched it to him at the recent junket for The Wolverine.
“I ask the same question," he enthused. "I literally asked that question to Tom (Cohen, Marvel VP of Production) the other day, because his job is to liaise with Sony and Fox. I said, ‘Man, can this happen?’ and he goes ‘Look, it’s not gonna be easy because you’re working with different studios and they’re their properties.’"
Sony, of course, owns Spider-Man, while 20th Century Fox has the rights to X-Me****n and Fantastic Four, probably locked away in a vault somewhere on a remote mountain top. Marvel controls the Avengers and its component characters.
Will the twain ever meet? Heck yes, if Jackman has any say in the matter. "Maybe I’m optimistic but I find it almost impossible that there’s not a way to bring Iron Man, all the Avengers characters, Wolverine, the X-Men characters and Spider-Man, and somehow get them together.”
It's an awesome and deeply romantic notion but this one will take Lionel Hutz and a giant case of money to come to fruition. In the meantime, Wolvie, of course, will soon be getting fighty in Japan and has some new featurettes to share with you. **The Wolverine **will blast into UK cinemas on July 26.