The first person to suggest a Deadpool & Wolverine movie was, somewhat surprisingly, Hugh Jackman.

That revelation comes from a new article on the upcoming Marvel film in Vanity Fair. It turns out that Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy were trying to crack the story for a third Deadpool film for a while, and not having any luck. In fact, they were so lost for a direction to take the project, they almost dropped it completely for a while.

“We frankly struggled to find a story that felt original and non-derivative of the other two Deadpool movies,” Levy explained. “It had to be deserving of the first Deadpool entry into the MCU, but also feel grounded because this is an earthbound, gritty, realistic superhero franchise. We had fits and starts. And Ryan and I were right at the edge of saying to Kevin, ‘You know what? Maybe now is not the right moment because we’re not coming up with a story.’ And that is the moment when Ryan’s phone rang and it was Hugh calling from his car.”

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It turns out that right around this same time Jackman was on a break from The Music Man on Broadway and thinking about what he wanted to do after the show closed.

“Literally, I thought: Deadpool-Wolverine. I want to do that movie. That’s what I want,” Jackman recalled.

Jackman had no idea what the status of Deadpool 3 was at that point; he claims he actually thought they may have been close to beginning production at the time. Luckily, they weren’t; in fact, they were just about to have a Zoom meeting with Kevin Feige about their progress on developing the story. Reynolds says on the call he said “I feel like we’d be idiots to look this gift horse in the mouth and ignore it. This is a one in a billion chance.”

Jackman said he felt that even though Logan had been such a well-received send-off for his version of the character, pairing him with Deadpool gave him a chance to do something “new and fresh” as Wolverine.

“I felt so rejuvenated playing the part,” he added. “I mean, I’m 25 years in, man, and it feels better than ever.”

Deadpool & Wolverine is set to open in theaters on July 26.