AceShowbiz -

Hugh Jackman made his final appearance as Wolverine in James Mangold's "Logan", and the actor once said he would consider returning as the clawed mutant for another performance if it meant working alongside the Avengers. However, Jackman appeared to be changing his tune in the midst of Disney's possible 21th Century buyout.

During a New York press junket for "The Greatest Showman" in which he plays P.T. Barnum of Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Aussie actor talked to Collider about the potential Disney-Fox merger, which would effectively put all the characters of mutant-kind and the Fantastic Four under the same studio umbrella as the MCU films.

Jackman said that "it's interesting because for the whole 17 years I kept thinking that would be so great, like I would love to see, particularly, Iron Man and the Hulk and Wolverine together. And every time I saw an Avengers movie I could just see Wolverine in the middle of all of them like punching them all on the head."

He then said, "But it was like, 'Oh well, that's not gonna happen,' and it was interesting just when I first saw that headline - it was just the possibility of it and who knows what's gonna happen, obviously - I was like, 'Hang on!' " The 49-year-old actor added that he wanted "someone else I would like to see Wolverine in there," as "the ship has sailed for me."

It was recently reported that the buyout deal could be reached as early as Christmas, with Disney and Fox being said to have already recruited legal teams to begin the process. While most of the details are still very much up in the air, both the MCU and Fox Marvel Universe have already announced their respective movie release slates for the next few years at this point. It remains to be seen if any of the mutants, including Wolverine, will pop up in any of the Phase 4 films that Marvel has planned.