A forgotten Hugh Jackman failure that lost over $100 million beat ‘Deadpool 3’ and its comic-accurate Wolverine costume to the punch by 18 whole years

As if Hugh Jackman returning from his self-imposed retirement to make his long-awaited Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Deadpool 3 wasn’t enough, the actor will also be sporting a comic-accurate Wolverine costume in live-action for the very first time.

The official image of the star’s Logan and Ryan Reynold’s Wade Wilson walking side-by-side inevitably set the internet ablaze, but we said “live-action” for a reason. As was pointed out by an eagle-eyed fan with an exceedingly good memory on Twitter, Jackman technically sported Wolverine’s signature yellow duds in a theatrically-released feature all the way back in 2006, but it’s perfectly okay if you don’t remember.

Animated family comedy Flushed Away may have been well-received by critics, but it was a box office disaster of epic proportions. At a cost of $149 million, stop-motion specialists Aardman’s first foray into fully-CGI filmmaking couldn’t have gone much worse after the fast-paced caper sank without a trace in theaters, cost DreamWorks an estimated $109 million in losses, and saw the studio sever its ties with the company altogether.

And yet, it lives on in cinematic history for being the first occasion that any Jackman character – in this case anthropomorphized rat Roddy St. James – was seen in proximity to Wolverine’s most famous outfit. Knowing how Reynolds’ brain works, though, it’s not out of the question to expect a Flushed Away gag in Deadpool 3 when the poop jokes basically write themselves, and we all know the Merc with a Mouth isn’t above scatological humor when the situation calls for it.