As far as studio tentpoles are concerned, the superhero genre is undoubtedly the most popular go-to avenue for blockbusters at the moment.  Marvel has now built a cohesive cinematic universe in which its many characters interact with each other across different movies—just as in the comic books—and DC is attempting to get its act together at Warner Bros. with the same idea.  However, studios are limited as to which characters they can use in the films due to rights ownership, despite the fact that the real Avengers includes not only Iron Man and Captain America, but also Spider-Man and, at times, members of the X-Men franchise.

Steve recently sat down to interview Hugh Jackman at the press day for his upcoming film The Wolverine, and when asked about the possibility of having these characters interact with each other in a mega-superhero film, Jackman enthusiastically responded that he’d love to fight alongside Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the entirety of The Avengers as Wolverine.  Hit the jump to see what else he had to say.

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The rights to the major comic book characters are currently divided amongst a number of studios, but most notably Fox has X-Men and Fantastic Four, Sony has Spider-Man, and Marvel has Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, etc.  When speaking with Jackman, Steve asked him what it would take to get all of these characters together onscreen, and the actor noted that he’s been asking the same exact question:

“Mate, I ask the same question.  I literally asked the same question the other day to Tom from Marvel who works with all the other studios, he works with Sony and Fox, that’s his job to liaise.  I said, ‘Man, can this happen?’ and he goes ‘Look, it’s not gonna be easy because you’re working with different studios and they’re their properties.’  But I believe—maybe I’m optimistic, I understand at Marvel they’ve got The Avengers, they’ve got a lot of big things going on, but at some point I just find it almost impossible that there’s not a way to bring Iron Man, all the Avengers characters, Wolverine, the X-Men characters, Spider-Man, and somehow get them in together.”

Obviously the rights issues provide a major barrier, as an enormous amount of money stands to be made from, say, Wolverine showing up in an Avengers movie, but Jackman cheekily suggested the studios just split the bill three ways:

“(smiling) I don’t see the impediment!  I’m like, okay you’ve got three studios, just split it three ways in terms of the cost, and happy days it’s all coming together!  I would love to… I’m in for it, I’m totally up for it because I think that would be really exciting for fans across the board.”

While a team up of this nature still seems rather unlikely, it’s nice to see Jackman speaking so enthusiastically about the prospect of fighting bad guys alongside Tony Stark and Spider-Man.  You can watch this portion of Steve’s interview with Jackman below, and look for the full interview here on Collider closer to the release of The Wolverine.