An international sensation, Hugh Jackman rose to prominence after starring as the Wolverine in X-Men. He earned massive fame and money from this franchise and probably didn’t need another big break. X-Men earned $407 million at the box office and rendered him appealing profits. However, the role that he turned down made way more money at the box office and became one of the most iconic roles of Hollywood. We are referring to the legendary James Bond.
Even though this film could have taken his career to new heights, Hugh decided to reject it and stick to X-Men. There are not one but more factors that contributed to this decision. To begin with, Jackman wasn’t convinced with James Bond’s adventures, considering the past movies. He found the stories far too out of the world and unreal.
According to Hugh, “I was about to do X-Men 2 and a call came from my agent asking if I’d be interested in Bond,”. He added, “I just felt at the time that the scripts had become so unbelievable and crazy, and I felt like they needed to become grittier and real.”
Though the franchise had promising potential, Jackman didn’t have enough time to commit to two big franchises. Lack of time would have affected his personal hours as well as his quality of work. Since both were action movies under big production houses, the actor had to dedicate his 100% to each role. “ I was also worried that between Bond and X-Men, I’d never had time to do different things,” he said. “I always tried to do different things. But there was a time between X-Men 3 and the first Wolverine movie when I could see the roles getting smaller. People wanted me to play that kind of hero part exclusively. It felt a little bit claustrophobic.”
So Hugh had to let go of the popular James Bond, and his loss became Daniel Craig’s gain. As much as we love Hugh Jackman, fans have admitted enjoying Craig’s portrayal. It seems like the James Bond franchise needed a revamp and Craig was made for this change of direction. The producers wanted to replace Pierce Brosnan by the time the doomed Die Another Day came out. His exit was announced in 2004, followed by Craig’ Casino Royale in 2006. The actor admitted to having reservations before signing up for the project. But then he convinced himself to get over his fears and take the risk. As we all know, this risk was a massive success, with Skyfall making $1 Billion in 2012.
In the end, both Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig did great with their respective choices and had no regrets about it.
