While promoting X-Men: Days of Future Past last year, a film which Hugh Jackman said refreshed his enthusiasm for the X-Men movie franchise and his long-term future playing Wolverine, he spoke about a certain other character he’d like the share the screen with again. A standalone X-Men movie based on Deadpool is on the way next year, starring Ryan Reynolds, but even though the popular Marvel Comics character already appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, everyone’s pretending that didn’t happen.

The first Wolverine solo movie has been practically written off by Fox and all the filmmakers currently working on X-Men projects, and the introductions of both Deadpool and Gambit are being re-done in 2016 alongside X-Men: Apocalypse. Jackman is a big fan of Reynolds and the Deadpool character and teased interest in having his Wolverine share the screen him with him once again. That was a while before Fox greenlit Deadpool and gave it an official release date.

With Jackman promoting his latest film, Chappie, and getting in shape preparing to shoot both X-Men: Apocalypse and Wolverine 3 back-to-back, he can’t avoid questions about what other X-Men movies Jackman’s mutant antihero could appear in now that he’s claiming to want to play the character until he dies. So far, Wolverine has appeared in every X-Men movie by Fox to date and the next one up is Deadpool. MTV asked him if he’d be open to a cameo appearance in the film (fellow X-Men character Colossus will be in it but recast) to which he responded to it by complimenting the Canadian star, saying Reynolds is a really great actor and that he’ll “nail” the Deadpool role.

“They are definitely enemies in the comics and they always spark off well together so I’d be open to that idea.”

Like Reynolds, Jackman understands and open admits that the Deadpool character wasn’t utilized very well in his onscreen introduction. However, in what little screentime he had as Wade Wilson in that movie, Reynolds did “nail” it – to use Jackman’s words. But this time around, everything’s different and Fox is only making Deadpool because of the demand of fans and the response to the conceptual test footage director Tim Miller made with Ryan Reynolds when pitching the project to the studio.

While Fox may be spending less on Deadpool than your average modern Marvel movie budget, they’re undoubtedly banking on the character for the long-term. The plan is for 2-3 Marvel movies per year going forward from Fox and the studio is aiming to find more bankable leads to help share the Hugh Jackman spotlight going into the future – hence the solo movies for Reynolds’ Deadpool and Channing Tatum’s Gambit, both of whom will eventually be folded into the core X-Men team-up films.

Expect all kinds of cameos in Deadpool and don’t be surprised if the infamous Merc with a Mouth is somehow worked into Fox’s other 2016 X-Men movies and eventually, X-Force. It’s too good of an opportunity not to have Jackman and Reynolds on screen together again.

Fantastic Four opens August 7th, 2015, Deadpool on February 12, 2016, X-Men: Apocalypse on May 27, 2016, Gambit on October 7 2016, Wolverine 3 (not the official title) on March 3rd, 2017, Fantastic Four 2 on July 14th, 2017, and some as-yet unspecified X-Men film on July 13th, 2018.