It's generally understood in the movie-making business that fewer people will see a movie if said film is rated R. From a basic numbers standpoint this makes sense, as an R rating reduces the amount of overall people who can see the movie in a theater. With that in mind, it's rare to see a film with major box office potential be anything other than PG or PG-13. Comic book movies, specifically, are a gamble if they're rated R. Which would explain reports that Hugh Jackman took a massive pay cut to make sure that the upcoming Wolverine movie Logan is rated R.

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Mangold said that Hugh Jackman took a salary cut because he wanted to do an R-rated movie. — Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) December 11, 2016

Recently, the R-rated Deadpool, with its $760.3 million at the box office, proved to be a success given its comparatively modest $58 million budget. And that's the thing: These gambles often must be cheap enough to make in order to reduce the cost if the R-rated superhero film doesn't hit. Shortly after The Wolverine in 2013, rumors circulated that Fox was offering Hugh Jackman $100 million to appear in the next four X-Men movies. Now, according to Ain't It Cool's Eric Vespe, Logan director James Mangold claimed that Jackman accepted a lower salary for the film to bring the budget down to an acceptable place to warrant an R rating.

This fits with the tone of what we've seen in the first impressive Logan trailer, which shows an old-ass, haggard Logan wandering a desolate middle-American wasteland. It's like if Cormac McCarthy randomly decided to write a story in the X-Men universe. And the R rating, along with Jackman's faith in the tone of the film, gives even more hope for what looks like a promising Wolverine installment. Or maybe he really just wants to see a whole lot more blood.

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Matt Miller Culture Editor Matt is the Culture Editor at Esquire where he covers music, movies, books, and TV—with an emphasis on all things Star Wars, Marvel, and Game of Thrones.

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