Keanu Reeves Finally Admits What We Suspected All Along
Whoa, dude.
Everybody's favorite actor, Keanu Reeves, recently took part in an interview with Sirius XM accompanied by his buddy and Bill & Ted Face the Music co-star Alex Winter. Asked if there were any parts he wished he could travel back in time to play, Reeves didn't hesitate to name-drop a certain grizzled, Canadian, adamantium-infused mutant.
"I've always wanted to play Wolverine," Reeves said with a sly smile. Winter — who didn't seem at all surprised by this — immediately chimed in with, "It's not too late! Not too late for Keanu to play Wolverine, I'm just gonna leave that there." Reeves, though, disagreed: "It is too late. [The role has] been filled really well, and I'm all good with it now."
Judging by that devilish grin, Reeves likely knew that what he was saying was going to send X-Men fans into an absolute tizzy. The X-Fandom has long linked the actor with that particular role, and when it came time for Hugh Jackman — who ably portrayed the mutant in nine feature films over nearly 20 years — to step down from the part, speculation ignited anew that Marvel might take a look at Reeves to play the next iteration of Wolverine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, there's probably no way that will happen. Following Disney's acquisition of Fox, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is taking over the X-Men movie franchise and is reportedly looking to recast Wolverine with a younger actor. In fact, the entire X-Men line-up (except Deadpool) will likely be recast with younger stars. At 55 years old, Reeves is four years older than even Jackman, making his chances of playing a Wolverine slim to none ... unless Marvel wanted to employ him for flash-forward sequences at some point.
Just to be clear, though, Reeves didn't bring up Wolverine just to toy with fans' hearts. When asked to confirm that he was serious about his pining for the role, the actor said, "Oh, yeah. Frank Miller's Wolverine? For sure."
Keanu Reeves' favorite run of Wolverine defined the character
There are about a million reasons why Frank Miller is a comics legend, and for Marvel, the writer and artist did some of his most tremendous work. In the early '80s, Miller successfully rebooted Daredevil; many of the things we now take for granted about Matt Murdock — his strong moral code, his Catholicism, his tortured inner battle over his crime-fighting career — were Miller's doing. In 1982, Miller and the equally legendary comics writer Chris Claremont were sharing a cab on the way back from San Diego Comic-Con when they conceived the idea for a four-part miniseries centered on Wolverine, the X-Man who had swiftly risen to become one of Marvel's most popular characters since his 1974 introduction (via Comics Alliance).
Thanks to Claremont's stark writing and Miller's kinetic, expertly laid-out panels, the miniseries — which ran from September to December 1982 — became a massive hit. The series did for James "Logan" Howlett what Miller's Daredevil run had done for that character: strongly established his characterization, motivations, and backstory in a way that would come to define him for decades. Aside from that, the dream team of Claremont, Miller, and inker Glynis Oliver totally recalibrated the way comic book stories could be told — with short, punchy lines of dialogue and an art style that conveyed movement and action more effectively than perhaps any comic that had come before.
Doing a little quick math, Reeves would have just turned 18 years old when the debut issue of Miller's Wolverine dropped in 1982 — so we can't say we're surprised it had a lasting effect on him, and that he would have been keen to take on the role of Wolverine in the past. Unfortunately, as Reeves himself noted, that ship has pretty much sailed. But that doesn't mean the chances of seeing him in the MCU in some capacity are totally squashed.
Marvel has been courting Keanu Reeves for years
Marvel enthusiasts have been fan-casting Reeves in all kinds of MCU roles for years now, and if there's one thing we know about Kevin Feige, it's that he's keen to give the fans what they want. Last summer, during the press tour for Spider-Man: Far From Home, Feige was asked if Reeves had ever been considered for a role in a Marvel flick. His answer raised every eyebrow in the room.
"We talk to him for almost every film we make," Feige said with a chuckle. "I don't know when, if, or ever he'll join the MCU, but we very much want to figure out the right way to do it."
Feige wasn't just whistling Dixie: He went on to compare the situation with Reeves with the casting of Jake Gyllenhaal, whom he said Marvel had also spoken with about a bevy of different roles before he was finally cast as Quentin Beck — aka Mysterio – in Far From Home.
So, while Reeves may not be suiting up as Wolverine, Moon Knight, or any other of the A-list heroes whose tights fans keep trying to stuff him into, we're pretty sure that Feige will find a way to bring the world's most beloved actor into the world's biggest movie franchise at some point.