While Disney has become known as the home of Marvel, there were at one point various studios developing movies based on Marvel properties. One such studio was Fox, which before Disney acquired the company, had the film rights to the entire X-Men comic book franchise. As a result, Fox produced various X-Men movies and spin-offs about certain superhero characters – including Wolverine. In particular, James Mangold directed the 2013 film The Wolverine which has since gone on to become one of the most beloved Marvel movie adaptations. Unfortunately, it looks like Disney Plus has removed the movie from their US streaming service.
As pointed out over at WODP, The Wolverine was removed from Disney Plus on April 2. While Disney now owns Fox along with its X-Men films and film characters, apparently even they can’t overcome the barriers of licensing rights. In what’s become a bit of a history loop for the movie, The Wolverine was very first added to Disney Plus in September of 2019. It was soon removed in December, and then brought back again a month later in January. While fans were probably hoping it would stay on the streaming service, as stated above, Disney had to take the movie away yet again.
With that in mind, of course, it stands to reason that the film should return at some point soon. However, it could only be another short time period before it’s removed yet again. While Disney does hold rights over the film and all of its other X-Men counterparts now, it seems it’s just a difficult film to keep wrangled in their streaming selection. Hopefully they’ll fix that issue permanently in the near future.
After all, The Wolverine is no doubt one of the more appreciated solo-films featuring the iconic character. While not quite as great as James Mangold’s Wolverine film Logan, and not quite as bad as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it does meet a nice middle ground between the two. It really is a shame that Marvel fans won’t be able to enjoy the fan-favorite on Disney Plus until it somehow reaches the streaming service yet again.
James Mangold’s The Wolverine starred Hugh Jackman as the title character, alongside Rila Fukushima, Tao Okamoto, and Hiroyuki Sanada. Famke Janssen also appears in a series of visions as Jean Grey.