The Epic Nicolas Cage “Deadpool & Wolverine” Cameo That Might Have Been
Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen Deadpool & Wolverine yet, move along to another part of the multiverse timeline.
As Deadpool & Wolverine slashes past one box office milestone after another, we’ve talked a lot about the stars who made surprise cameos in the Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman epic. Some were from Fox’s Marvel era, like Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, who first appeared in 2003’s Daredevil and then again in 2005’s stand-alone Elektra. In the film, Garner was one of the superheroes marooned in the Void, alongside three comrades who formed part of an underground resistance who had more or less stopped resisting—Wesley Snipe as Blade in a history-making return, Dafne Keen’s mutant Laura (from James Mangold’s 2017 banger Logan, the film that Jackman’s be-clawed mutant originally died in), and in a shocking twist, Channing Tatum as Gambit. (Tatum had tried to get a Gambit movie off the ground for four years, but the deal was ultimately scuttled when Disney acquired Fox in 2019.)
They were joined by another shocking cameo—Chris Evans—who returned not to play Captain America, the character he’s world-famous for, but his first-ever superhero role, Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, from Fox’s 2005 film Fantastic Four. These were the biggest names to make significant cameo contributions, but they weren’t the only ones—in a brief but pitch-perfect scene during Deadpool’s search across the multiverse for a Logan variant to help him save his timeline, he runs into the infamous Cavillerine, a Wolverine variant played by none other than Henry Cavill, who unleashed his two massive guns (his arms, folks) in a butt-kicking moment that nodded to Cavill’s most iconic action sequence to date.
Speaking with Collider, Ryan Reynolds revealed there was another massive star he tried to get to make a cameo in the film— Nicolas Cage—to see if Cage would reprise Ghost Rider, the Marvel antihero brought to life in Sony’s wing of the canon.
Reynolds wasn’t giving away much when Collider asked about the potential Cage casting, but he did confirm that it “came to a conversation for sure. Yeah, but no.” That’s all Reynolds would reveal about the potential of getting Cage back on the motorcycle to play Johnny Blaze.
We might never know how close Reynolds and Cage got to making this happen or even if it was close. There was clearly no shortage of surprising cameos in Deadpool & Wolverine, but given how much fun everyone seemed to be having, it’s hard not to feel like Cage would have been in his element. Perhaps this version of the film exists on another timeline.
For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:
Jennifer Garner on Returning to the Fight in “Deadpool & Wolverine”
“Deadpool & Wolverine”: Wesley Snipes Makes History While Chris Evans Goes Off
That Perfect “Deadpool & Wolverine” Cameo That Linked to the Best “Mission: Impossible” Fight Ever
Featured image: BERLIN, GERMANY – JANUARY 23: Actor Nicolas Cage poses at a photocall at the Hotel De Rome on January 23, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. Cage was in Berlin to promote his 3-D fantasy/adventure film ‘Ghost Rider – Spirit of Vengeance,’ based on a comic book, in which he returns as the antihero Johnny Blaze, also known as Ghost Rider, a bounty hunter for the devil. The film will appear in German cinemas on February 23. (Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images)
