Jackman, who returns to his iconic role as the mutant super-soldier, Wolverine in the X-Men films, was amongst the first to hear the news directly from Lee, and soon spilled the beans to the attending press.
Jackman and Lee, who have known each other since 2000 from the first X-Men movie, hooked up Thursday at the con after Jackman made an unscheduled surprise appearance. Jackman later proceeded to make an unscheduled surprise announcement when he accidentally told the the Associated Press about Lee’s cameo appearance. “Don’t tell anyone,” he joked. “It's always a big shock when people see him."
Jackman went on to praise Lee; "Around here this guy is like a god," he said. “People see this guy, they faint. Their whole livelihood and everything they're interested in came out of his mind."
Lee joked with Jackman, promising that he would try not to overshadow him in the movie.
Side note: The character of Wolverine is one of the few characters not created by Stan Lee. He was created by writer Len Wein and Marvel art director John Romita Sr., who designed the character, and was first drawn for publication by Herb Trimpe in a cameo appearance on the last page of Incredible Hulk #180 (October 1974) and his first "full" appearance in Incredible Hulk #181 (November 1974). X-Men writer Chris Claremont played a significant role in the character's subsequent development as well as artist/writer John Byrne, who insisted on making the character older than the other X-Men. Frank Miller also helped to revise the character in the early 1980s with the eponymous limited series in which Wolverine's catch phrase, "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice", was first written.
20th Century Fox’s new X-Men film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is due for release in May 2009.