Struggling to place Boyd Holbrook? If you’ve been binge-watching Narcos, you’ll know him as the dirty-blonde DEA agent Steve Murphy tasked with hunting down Pablo Escobar. If not, come next year you won’t be able to escape him. Holbrook, who first graced the big-screen in 2008’s Milk, is set to play the lead villain in Wolverine 3 alongside Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart.
This being Marvel, we don’t know much. Even the name, Wolverine 3, is a working title yet to be confirmed. But a few rumours have bubbled to the surface: one, this is Hugh’s last outing as everyone’s favourite X-Man hero. Two, the film is an adaptation of the well-loved comic series set in an alternative timeline called Old Man Logan story. This was further bolstered after Jackman posted a picture of himself on Instagram looking seriously grey, suggesting we might very well see an aged Logan.
We also know very little about the film’s new baddie – well, until we sat down with Holbrook for a catch up. Aside from being a “relentless, calculating and intense head of security for a global enterprise” – what else could he tell us?
“He’s a brilliant inventor of robotics and neuroscience and he is trying to locate someone. Not Wolverine, just someone. And Wolverine/Logan is kind of forced into helping him."
Of course, with Marvel’s levels of secrecy surrounding their scripts, the process wasn’t exactly straight forward.
“I auditioned, but forgot about it because they took months to come back to me. They called and I was like ‘woo hoo,’ he says, sardonically. “Well, no, I was like cool, can I read the script? Do I really want to do this? I would like to read it first. Oh fuck, and then they wouldn’t give me a pdf and I had to sign a hand delivered thing. Then it was like, do I really want to do this? If it’s going to be like this, Jesus. But I get it you know? People really eat this Marvel stuff up.”
Following in the footsteps of Deadpool, Wolverine 3 has been given an R rating. The script is reportedly more violent, which Holbrook happily confirms.
“This is kind of an anti-Marvel film – I don’t know if they’d appreciate that but it’s true, it’s just different. There’s a disclosure in the first few pages on the script which says: if a house falls on you, you die. If you get hit by a car, you’re hit by a car. It’s not like in the Avengers world where you never reload your gun, but you’re obviously out of bullets. We’re trying to make a different film to those movies. People can die.”
Ah, we see. People can die. Given that this is Jackman’s last film, does that mean a certain clawed being won't live to see the end? How’s his life by the end of the film?
“I think he’s getting a bit worse for wear,” Holbrook says, before adding with a grin: “Poor Wolverine.”
Take from that what you will, friends. We’ll have to wait till 2017 to know for sure.
Holbrook is the face of the new fragrance Diesel BAD, out now at Boots
