Taron Egerton admits to Marvel meeting over potential Wolverine role

Taron Egerton has admitted to meeting with Marvel over the possibility of portraying Wolverine in a future MCU movie.

The 32-year-old Brit has been repeatedly linked to the superhero role, which is up for grabs after Hugh Jackman departed in the wake of 2017's Logan.

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Along with the rest of the X-Men roster, Wolverine is now available to Marvel Studios in the wake of Disney's purchase of 20th Century Fox.

“I don’t think it would be wrong to say [there have been meetings],” Egerton told the New York Times in an interview to promote his new Apple TV+ crime series Black Bird.

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The star added: "I’d be excited but I’d be apprehensive as well, because Hugh is so associated with the role that I’d wonder if it’d be very difficult for someone else to do it. But hopefully if it does come around, they’ll give me a shot."

Jackman first played adamantium-clawed Wolverine in X-Men way back in 2000, after Scottish actor Dougray Scott was forced to bow out due to scheduling conflicts with Mission: Impossible 2.

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The Australian actor became a fixture of the X-Men franchise, including headlining a trio of solo movies focused around the character.

Egerton has been one of the leading contenders to play Wolverine when the character inevitably returns, with fellow Brit performer Daniel Radcliffe also featured in rumour round-ups.

Radcliffe, though, told Yahoo UK in 2019 that his connection to Wolverine came about simply because of a joke that the internet took seriously.

He said: "I made, what I thought was, an obvious joke about, I think, I said that [I'd be] Wolverine if he'd been shrunk in a hot wash, and then people thought that that was serious.

"I got onto set on my next job in Australia and people were like, 'so you're playing Wolverine? That's awesome man!' and I was like no, no, no, that was a joke."

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Egerton, meanwhile, recently graced the West End stage in Cock and is returning to Apple TV+ after Black Bird to play a key figure in the creation of the video game phenomenon Tetris.

Directed by Stan & Ollie filmmaker Jon S. Baird, that movie also stars Roger Allam and Toby Jones.

Watch: The evolution of Wolverine in comic book form