If one of the screenwriters of The Wolverine had been able to pull it off, Hugh Jackman's Logan might have had a sidekick far more recognizable to fans of Fox's X-Men franchise.

In an interview with CreativeWriting, Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) revealed he tried to find a way to bring Rogue, played by Anna Paquin in the original X-Men trilogy, into director James Mangold's film:

I love Rogue and I just think that there’s something about this idea that Rogue is tremendously empathetic but incapable of safe human contact. That always moved me and I thought that’s what really got to the heart of what makes the X-Men franchise so unique.

So I was trying to do something with Rogue in the script. I even had a set of ideas that the old man possessed a version of Rogue’s power and that was going to be indicated by a white stripe in his hair. Eventually it became very goofy, and I threw it out because I started realizing throughout the script that it became more problematic than cool.

It’s no accident to me that in the first X-Men film the first two mutants that you really see who have a connection are Wolverine and Rogue. There’s something special between them, so I was trying to bring Rogue into it, but it just didn’t get there. I regretted there wasn’t a way to figure it out, but when I look at the film now, it would have stuck out if we tried to shoehorn her in there just because it was another character from the universe.

The Wolverine has grossed $390 million worldwide since its July 26 opening. Paquin will reprise her role as Rogue in director Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past.

(via ComicBookMovie)