Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman Screen ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are giving fans a taste of Deadpool & Wolverine just before the Marvel movie’s sure-to-be-big opening weekend. 

The actors surprised fans at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, on Thursday, July 25, just a day before the release of Walt Disney Studios’ latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and its first R-rated flick). After a brief introduction from Reynolds, Jackman, costar Emma Corrin, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and director Shawn Levy, the crowd at San Diego Convention Center’s Hall H was treated to a screening of the entire movie.

“We’ve been around the world with this movie but this is the icing on the cake, right here,” said Jackman, 55.

A visibly emotional Reynolds, 47, agreed, recalling promoting Deadpool at Comic-Con in 2015. “I was the most nervous human being you would ever see,” he said. “I was stepping into a dream come true … and I remember making that movie for you. And I remember how gratifying it was that everyone else liked it too.”

Reynolds and Jackman have been busy promoting their returns to the big screen as the anti-hero Deadpool and X-Men character Wolverine, respectively — culminating in the Hall H presentation, a particularly star-studded one given who emerged following the screening.

Spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine follow, as joining the team onstage in Hall H after the screening were actors Chris Evans, who in the film reprises his role as Fantastic Four‘s Johnny Storm a.k.a. Human Torch; Jennifer Garner, returning as Elektra from Daredevil; Wesley Snipes, who returns as the titular vampire hunter in Blade; Channing Tatum as Gambit, a Marvel character he previously came close to playing on the big screen; and Dafne Keen, following up her performance in Logan as Laura a.k.a. X-23.

Reynolds and Jackman gave each of their fellow actors a hug before the group posed for photos, waved at the crowd and left together.

Deadpool & Wolverine also stars Matthew Macfadyen, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney and Leslie Uggams. It follows the events of 2018’s Deadpool 2, as well as 20th Century Fox’s X-Men film series which began in 2000 with Jackman as Wolverine. 

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In their April interviews for PEOPLE’s first-ever collectible side-by-side covers, Reynolds and Jackman reflected on first working together as their infamous characters in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the collaboration that has developed in the years since.

“We rely on each other for the real kind of advice that you want,” said Reynolds, also a co-writer and producer on Deadpool & Wolverine. 

Jackman agreed about their bond as friends, saying at the time, “There’s probably fewer friends in our life that you can say anything to, the stuff you’re ashamed, embarrassed, anything.”

San Diego Comic-Con runs July 24–28. Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters July 26.