Hugh Jackman's Wolverine Was Almost In Sam Raimi's 'Spider-Man'

If there's one dream that comic book fanboys have for their favorite heroes on the silver screen, it's that one day we'll see Spider-Man swinging through Avengers Mansion while Wolverine pops a cold one in the kitchen. Unfortunately with Marvel's heroes scattered across multiple studios, that's unlikely to ever happen, no matter what Vin Diesel says.

But it almost did happen back in 2002, at least according to Hugh Jackman. While talking to HuffPo, he revealed that Wolverine almost made a cameo in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, this despite the X-Men falling under the 20th Century Fox banner and Sony's control of Spidey. In fact, it would have happened if not for something really lame occurring just before....

Jackman: "In the first "Spider-Man" -- Kevin Feige reminded me of this -- we really tried to get me to come on and do something, whether it was a gag or just to walk through the shot or something. The problem was, we couldn't find the suit. The suit was stuck in some thing. And so when they were in New York when I was there, we couldn't get it together. So, you know, I actually asked some high level people about it. Because the optimist in me goes, "Why not? Why can't we do it? You know, a split cast or whatever?" And someone reminded that the amount of money Fox paid compared to the amount of money Disney paid is very different [laughs]. So how you split that pie up? God knows. But in the comic books, what's great about it is they're just mashing together all the time -- and it's awesome. And people are like, "Yeah, well, let's get this one with that!" And, you know, I still think, one day, there may be an ability to do it."

Jackman has been pretty vocal about his desire to see the Marvel brands united, so it's not surprising how gung-ho he was for the cameo to happen back then. He'd obviously be just as into it now if the opportunity came up. It's just a little odd Wolvie's jacket wasn't available all of a sudden. The question is why would it have been possible then when it clearly isn't now? Let's not forget that comic book movies weren't quite as big back then as they are now, so the studios were probably more forgiving. And they probably wouldn't have used the name "Wolverine" at all, nor would we have seen any claws or anything like that to avoid any potential legal complications.

Still, this is a pretty cool case of "What could have been".  Wolverine will be seen next alongside his mutant brethren in X-men: Days of Future Past on May 23rd 2014.