Wolverine’s Most Iconic Costume Was Crazy Expensive
While there were plenty of reasons to love Deadpool & Wolverine, the one that most pleased comic fans was a certain costume. While much of the film’s hype concerned Wolverine finally donning his iconic yellow outfit, a montage allowed us to briefly see the character’s famous brown outfit that he wore in the comics for almost the entirety of the 1980s. It was a great bit of fan service that came at a great cost: Deadpool & Wolverine editors Dean Zimmerman and Shane Reid recently confirmed that this legendary outfit cost a cool $100,000 to create.
The Expensive Brown And Tan
One of the chief reasons this Wolverine costume costs so much money is that it is very high-quality despite getting relatively little screen time. As Zimmerman put it, “It’s one of those things that’ll stand the test of time.” The other reason is that it is completely bespoke and customized to the actor’s body: “It’s all done to an inch of Hugh’s body,” he said.
While the editors didn’t get into the specific pricing of others, they made it sound like all of the Wolverine costumes that we see are surprisingly expensive and that this actually affected what we did (and didn’t) get to see onscreen. Zimmerman said, “One of our storyboard artists was a huge comic book fan, and he gave us a list of, like, ten of [the Wolverine variants].” While it’s nice to have options and even nicer to have a superfan onboard, the editors had to balance the ambition of showing all these different outfits with the “time and budget issues” of producing a major film.
The Making Of The Montage
According to Dean Zimmerman, the need to “get a little economical” influenced much of what we saw onscreen during this montage. For example, the cinematic recreation of Wolverine being crucified began with a conversation with the actor himself: “Hugh, can you take your shirt off and be bolted to a cross?” Once the actor agreed, Zimmerman claims all that was left to do was “get a bunch of pink skulls, throw ‘em down there, and light it in the way of the comic book.”
Old Man Logan
He also confirmed that another fan-favorite Wolverine costume, the one from the Old Man Logan comic, was “also done with budget in mind” and with consideration of what could be done in their “finite amount of time” after filming resumed (the movie’s production was delayed due to last year’s writers’ and actor’s strikes). That outfit was particularly pleasing to see for comic fans because the Logan movie had loosely adapted the comic but not recreated his cowboy-inspired look. Now, we know that finally giving us that awesome Wolverine costume was due to time and budget constraints as much as the desire to provide fan service.
The Brown and Tan Defined A Generation
Younger Marvel fans may be wondering why Wolverine’s $100,000 brown costume was so resonant to certain fans, and it all comes down to when someone first began reading X-Men comics. While the berserker mutant was introduced in a yellow costume in the ‘70s and had one throughout the ‘90s and 2000s (after a brief period of movie-inspired black leather), he wore this brown outfit from 1980 through 1991. Therefore, an entire generation of comics fans grew up with the brown costume, and it was a real joy to finally see it onscreen.
What Will Hugh Jackman Wear Next?
Now that it sounds like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is onboard for more Marvel shenanigans, it will be interesting to see how many more of his comic costumes make it to the big screen. Could we eventually see his Uncanny X-Force outfit along with an adaptation of Rick Remender’s amazing run on the original comic? We can only dream, even though the final price of these iconic outfits may be less of a dream and more of a nightmare for the studio.
Source: Josh Wilding
