X-MEN ORIGINS:
WOLVERINE.

A BACKSTORY YEARS IN DEVELOPMENT, FILMED UNDER PRESSURE

DAVID BENIOFF’S DARKER DRAFT, AND THE DIRECTOR WHO INHERITED IT

David Benioff pursued a Wolverine script for roughly three years before Fox hired him in October 2004, researching Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X comics, the Claremont/Miller 1982 Wolverine limited series and 2001’s Origin to build a darker, more brutal take on the character’s backstory. Skip Woods revised the draft, with James Vanderbilt and Scott Silver doing further rewrites before the 2007–08 Writers Guild strike cut the process short. Gavin Hood, an Oscar winner for Tsotsi, was announced as director in July 2007.

“There’s this stupid notion out there that Tom Rothman wants to ruin the franchise. What? That’s stupid… This is a huge thing for the studio. Of course he doesn’t want to ruin the franchise.”

Gavin Hood, publicly defending Fox studio chief Tom Rothman against reports of creative conflict on set

Hood pushed back directly on the widely reported idea that he and Rothman had clashed over tone. “I am very fond of Tom,” he said. “We certainly never yelled at each other… I have never had a stand-up argument with Tom Rothman. Never, ever, and nor has Tom with me, ever.” He described their disagreements as ordinary studio debate rather than hostility: “Did we discuss and debate what stylistically I was going to bring to the movie, and his expectations, and my expectations? Of course, of course you do that, and I hope it makes the movie better.”

AN UNFINISHED FILM REACHES AUDIENCES FIRST

THE WORKPRINT LEAK, THE FBI INVESTIGATION, AND A FEDERAL PRISON SENTENCE

On 1 April 2009, almost exactly a month before release, a full-length but unfinished workprint, missing roughly 400 visual effects shots, its score and a final sound mix and color grade, appeared online. Fox estimated 4.5 million downloads by the time the finished film reached theatres. The studio’s statement at the time called it “a stolen, incomplete and early version” of the film, adding: “The FBI and the MPAA also are actively investigating this crime. We are encouraged by the support of fansites condemning this illegal posting.”

The fallout reached inside News Corp itself. Fox News entertainment columnist Roger Friedman was fired days later after publishing a review of the leaked workprint; News Corp’s statement distancing itself from him read: “Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corporation. We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy.” The investigation itself led to a federal conviction: Gilberto Sanchez of the Bronx, who had uploaded the file to Megaupload, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in December 2011 to a year in federal prison. “The federal prison sentence handed down in this case sends a strong message of deterrence to would-be Internet pirates,” said US Attorney André Birotte Jr. Despite the leak’s scale, it didn’t meaningfully dent the box office: the film still opened to $85.1 million domestically a month later.

A BIGGER CONTROVERSY THAN THE LEAK, IN THE LONG RUN

WHY SEWING DEADPOOL’S MOUTH SHUT HAUNTED THIS FILM FOR YEARS

Ryan Reynolds played Wade Wilson with the character’s usual wit through the film’s first half, then the climax transforms him into “Weapon XI”: mouth sewn shut, eye-beams and retractable arm-blades grafted on, every signature trait of the comics’ motor-mouthed mercenary removed. Fans singled it out as the film’s worst decision almost immediately, and the complaint only grew louder with time.

“It’s easy to say we got some things wrong. Deadpool sewing up his mouth was one of the all-time foolish studio notes.”

Ryan Reynolds, in 2024, on this film’s treatment of the character

His co-star Liev Schreiber has framed Reynolds’s later solo Deadpool films as a direct response to it: “I felt like it was, in many ways, so antithetical to who that character was in Origins,” he said. “But I’m glad that Ryan was able to correct that mistake.” That correction took years. Reynolds spent much of the 2010s publicly lobbying for a faithful Deadpool film, a campaign that gathered real momentum once test footage closer to the character’s comics voice began circulating and helped convince Fox to finally greenlight 2016’s Deadpool, the film this one’s climax had spent seven years as the uncomfortable punchline for.

A LEAD WHO ALSO PRODUCED, A VILLAIN BUILT TO MATCH HIM

JACKMAN’S DOUBLE ROLE, SCHREIBER’S CREED, AND A STRYKER RECAST FROM SCRATCH

Hugh Jackman produced the film through his and John Palermo’s company Seed Productions alongside starring in it, giving him creative stakes in the project beyond the role he’d already played three times. Liev Schreiber, cast as Logan’s half-brother Victor Creed, reportedly built up significant muscle for the part, with Jackman and Hood pitching the two characters’ rivalry in press at the time as a decades-spanning blood feud rather than a conventional hero/villain pairing.

Danny Huston took over the role of William Stryker from Brian Cox, who’d played the character in X2 and appeared briefly, digitally de-aged, in X-Men: The Last Stand; this film instead cast a different actor outright for Stryker’s younger incarnation. Taylor Kitsch, cast as Gambit after Channing Tatum couldn’t commit to the schedule, signed a three-picture deal that implied a planned spinoff. It never happened. “It never really was an option” once this production wrapped, Kitsch said years later, though he continued to voice support for Channing Tatum’s own, ultimately cancelled, attempt at a standalone Gambit film.

THE REWATCH

A COMMERCIAL HIT, A CRITICAL LOW POINT, AND THE TRILOGY’S EVENTUAL REDEMPTION

X-Men Origins: Wolverine finished its run with $179.9 million domestically and $373.1 million worldwide against reviews that landed among the harshest the franchise had received: Rotten Tomatoes lists a 37% critics’ score, Metacritic a 40. Hugh Jackman himself has since said the finished film undersold the character it was meant to illuminate: “I had something to prove, and we could have done better,” he said. “Somehow the first Wolverine movie ended up looking like the fourth X-Men, just with different characters.”

The trilogy this film opened went on to close on its best-reviewed note by far: 2013’s The Wolverine recovered somewhat, and 2017’s Logan, James Mangold’s R-rated finale, became the best-reviewed film in the entire X-Men franchise. For a first watch, X-Men Origins: Wolverine sits in the Marvel movies in release order guide directly after Punisher: War Zone, continuing Fox’s X-Men timeline from X-Men: The Last Stand.