By Louise Watt
Associated Press
BEIJING — Hugh Jackman said Tuesday he wasn’t ready to give up playing the popular X-Men character Wolverine as he visited China to promote the franchise’s latest movie, which includes local elements intended to appeal to the massive Chinese audience. He also said that he thinks he will need future treatments for skin cancer after a second cancerous growth was removed from his nose last week. “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” the seventh movie in the mutant superhero franchise that has grossed $2.3 billion worldwide, premiered in Beijing on Tuesday. The Australian actor, who has appeared in every X-Men movie over 14 years, said it may have been premature for him to have said the next one would be his last.
The latest film sees Jackman travel back to 1973 to change history and save humans and mutants from destruction. It has Chinese elements, including the casting of Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, highlighting how Hollywood studios are keen to attract audiences in the world’s second-biggest movie market as box-office revenue growth flattens out at home. Fan, who has a small role as the teleporting superhero Blink, said that the movie would gross more in China because of her participation. When the movie’s action moves to the superheroes’ last place of sanctuary, a remote monastery, the Chinese subtitles indicate it is: “China.” However, Fan said at a news conference Tuesday that some of the columns looked “European.”
Jackman, 45, whose nose was bandaged after a basal cell carcinoma was removed last week, said he will probably have many more cancerous growths. His type of skin cancer is slow-growing and often recurs, but it is highly treatable.
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