Liam McIntyre unsheathes Wolverine on PS5

Sony’s September 2025 State of Play landed just as Tokyo Game Show week kicked off, and with it came the surprising reveal of Australian actor Liam McIntyre as the voice and performance-capture lead for Insomniac’s upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine. The trailer for the game (watch it below), revealed during the showcase, set a late-2026 launch window and a tone that is unapologetically sharp, bloodied, and mature.

McIntyre’s casting comes with a neat bit of cultural symmetry too, as he becomes the second Australian to don Wolverine’s adamantium claws in mainstream pop-culture – following on after Hugh Jackman’s two-decade reign on the big screen. Expectations could obviously not be higher, despite the different medium, but the good news is McIntyre has made a career of stepping into pressure cookers and walking out with the audience on his side.

If McIntyre’s name rings a bell, it is because he has already carried a beloved mantle once before. In Spartacus (2010), he succeeded the late Andy Whitfield and steered the series through ‘Vengeance’ (Season 02) and ‘War of the Damned’ (Season 03), proving he could balance physical intensity with the emotional honesty fans demanded. Despite a varied television career, he is no stranger to video games and is most notable for his portrayals of JD Fenix in Gears of War 4 (2016), and Taron Malicos in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019).

In terms of gaming, there is also something refreshingly on-brand about McIntyre’s relationship with the medium. Years before being cast as Logan, he was telling interviewers about how he proudly identifies as a gamer, which informed how he approached roles such as JD Fenix. That comfort inside the medium tends to show up on-screen in small ways (think timing, breath, a knowing pause before a punchline or a punch). Basically, he is an almost perfect casting for the role of Weapon X and there is reason for gamers to be excited.

Insomniac’s trailer frames Marvel’s Wolverine as a bruiser’s character study: a global thriller dragging Logan from the neon grime of Madripoor, to the frost of Canada, and even the tight busyness of Tokyo back-streets. The footage points to savage and tactile combat complemented by a veritable rogues gallery, with nods toward Mystique, Omega Red, Sentinels, and even the dreaded Reavers. In a brief behind-the-scenes beat, McIntyre speaks about hunting for Wolverine’s “essence” and building the performance from the inside out – language that sounds very much like an actor who knows he must earn the claws rather than simply wear them.

Despite being a gaming performance veteran, one cannot ignore the massive elephant in the room that comes with the Australian cultural hand-off from Hugh Jackman. Jackman has become known as the quintessential Wolverine, having defined the character in every single live-action Marvel film to date. As such, many might think McIntyre has his work cut out for him because, whether we like it or not, he will be compared. However, it is also clear how he is not being tasked with imitation; rather he is fronting a new canon within a clearly different medium. Even so, and perhaps with some serendipity, it is interesting to note how what connects the two actors is an Australian sensibility that tends to prize ‘understatement’ over ‘swagger’. Thus we have much to look forward to with McIntyre taking on the baton in the virtual world.

Off camera, McIntyre’s story has a distinctly Australian through-line. Born in Adelaide, he worked his way from short films and local television to international productions, married singer-actor Erin Hasan in Melbourne in 2014, and has stayed admirably grounded while navigating the whiplash of franchise work. He also teamed with Spartacus co-star Todd Lasance to create Get Good, a charity-rooted gaming series that helped raise funds following Australia’s Black Summer bushfires.

For all the noise around release windows and platform exclusivity, the most interesting question is simpler: who is Logan when the camera lingers? McIntyre’s body of work suggests a performance built on weariness, wit, and flickers of decency to keep Wolverine on the right side of the line. If Insomniac follows through on the promise of its reveal – brutal combat in service of character, not instead of it – then the studio may give PlayStation its most human superhero story yet.