‘Wolverine’ Spinoff Canceled in Favor of ‘Deadpool 3,’ Star Confirms

Deadpool & Wolverine is saving the Marvel Cinematic Universe next week, but if it wasn’t for Disney, we’d already have a Wolverine spinoff movie.

According to Ryan Reynolds, his upcoming movie was originally pitched as Deadpool 3 and had a stripped-down, relatively simple “indie” movie plot. Alternatively, it might have been about Wade Wilson fighting and/or helping Santa Claus. That part is a little unclear, but that’s the development of big-budget comic book movies for you.

However, once The Walt Disney Company purchased Fox and, with it, the film rights to the Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, and the X-Men, Deadpool 3 was transformed into Deadpool & Wolverine, a reunion for Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman after the disaster of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).

The new movie is Marvel Studios’ big swing at recovering the critical and commercial dominance it held as recently as 2019, when Avengers: Endgame closed out the Infinity Saga and saw the departure of key players like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson.

If any Marvel movie is going to restore the MCU, it’s Deadpool & Wolverine. Sadly, it turns out that Disney’s purchasing of Fox also demolished plans to make a Wolverine spinoff movie starring Dafne Keen as X-23/Laura, her character from Logan (2017).

Related: New ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer Reveals Lady Deadpool

Dafne Keen debuted as Laura in the James Mangold-directed film, which depicted Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan/James Howlett in his final, bleak years alongside Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). The film revealed that Laura was created from Wolverine’s DNA as a living weapon until she and other mutant children fought back and escaped from their prison.

The final trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine revealed that Dafne Keen would reprise the role of Laura, though the extent of her involvement is still unclear. For months, Keen (who recently starred in the Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte) had denied being in the film, but it turns out that she was taking direct inspiration from Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield and just straight-up lying about it.

Now that she can actually speak to her appearance in the MCU, Dafne Keen has also confirmed that Fox had plans to make an X-23 spinoff movie that was scuttled by the Disney-Fox deal (per Entertainment Weekly). Keen said, “It was very much a reality that then kind of fell through.

There were talks of a script being made. I’d heard it was an X-23 [movie]. I dunno how much of what I’m saying is true because I was 11, but this is what I’d heard through the grapevine.”

Related: Report: Marvel Changes ‘Avengers,’ Officially Finds Kang the Conqueror Replacement for the MCU

She continued, revealing that the canceled film initially made her feel that she had lost her opportunity to ever play the character again. She said, “I was quite sad. I was like, ‘Oh well, I guess that’s it. That’s life, and I’ll have to move on’ — even though this is one of the greatest characters I’ll ever get to play, and annoyingly, I got to play her at 11! I peaked at 11.”

It turns out that, though we might not ever get an X-23 movie, we will at least get to see Dafne Keen and Hugh Jackman together again soon. Deadpool & Wolverine executive producer Wendy Jacobson described her role in the film (per Inverse) as:

“Dafne coming in gives the film a real emotional poignancy and resonance. I will say, the one thing from the filmmakers side that was so cool was seeing Dafne and Hugh see each other for the first time before we started shooting. I’m pretty sure they hadn’t see each other in several years. She was just a kid when they made that movie and now she’s a grown-up, so it was really beautiful to see them reconnect.”

We’re bound to get a lot of appearances from mutants from all across the Fox franchise in Deadpool & Wolverine. If we lost a Wolverine spinoff, at least we got the return of Laura.

What mutants do you want to see in Deadpool & Wolverine?