Jeremy Allen White’s been crushing it on TV for a long time, first for his run at Lip Gallagher for the entirety of Shameless’ run, and these days for his Emmy-winning role as Carmy Berzatto in the Hulu subscription-exclusive series The Bear. But White has also been building up a solid presence in the film space too, and there are Marvel Cinematic Universe fans who have fancast him as Wolverine. Well, White did have a meeting with Marvel at one point, and he recently discussed how that went.
The actor’s been making the press rounds for his 2025 movie release Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, where he plays “The Boss” himself, Bruce Springsteen, and Happy Sad Confused was one of his stops. Host Josh Horowitz brought up comments White made in 2023 to GQ about how he’d met studio executives for a “kind of Marvel-y movie,” but when he asked these execs why he should do their movie, “they didn’t respond well to that.” Here’s how White looks back on that meeting now:
That was out of line. That was, again, me not entirely being invited to the party and being like, ‘I don’t want to go anyway.’ But yes, I had a meeting that I probably could have handled differently, for sure.
We still don’t know what Marvel movie Jeremy Allen White was in conversations for, although assuming this meeting happened in 2023, it could have been for one of the three MCU movies that came out this year. Maybe he was being looked at to play Bob/Sentry in Thunderbolts* or Johnny Storm/Human Torch in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Whatever the case, White regrets how he handled that meeting, and he also used his conversation with Josh Horowitz to elaborate about how he feels about superhero movies, saying:
First of all, it’s not like a bag on the genre as much as it is I don’t know what I can give to it really or how I fit into it. And also, I think there was a period where being in one of those films guaranteed you can get any movie made. If you find a script on the street and you take that around to people and you love it, you can get it made. And I just don’t know if that’s how it’s working anymore.
So that Marvel opportunity didn’t work out, and clearly Jeremy Allen White isn’t super passionate about this genre. But what if another upcoming Marvel movie or upcoming Marvel TV show comes along? After all, he’s voicing Rotta the Hutt in The Mandalorian & Grogu, so it’s not like he’s against blockbuster productions entirely. Well, when Horowitz brought up the aforementioned Wolverine fancastings, White responded:
Oh, that’s nice. That performance is great, [Hugh Jackman’s] done it for so long. He’s really excellent. That’s nice.
Hugh Jackman reprised Wolverine after a seven-year absence in Deadpool & Wolverine last year, and rumor has it he’s not only going to don the adamantium claws again in Avengers: Secret Wars, but also stay on for “more projects” if/when the X-Men are rebooted for the MCU. Regardless of how you feel about that, assuming this information is accurate, then that would seemingly prevent Jeremy Allen White from taking over the role, unless he’s able to appear as a Wolverine variant. Still, I hope another Marvel opportunity comes White’s way that he approves of, as it’d be great to see him in this franchise.
You can see Jeremy Allen playing Bruce Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere in theaters now, and The Mandalorian & Grogu will follow May 22, 2026. White is also set to star opposite Jeremy Strong, Mikey Madison and Bill Burr in The Social Reckoning, which is getting a 2026 release, too.