How does Hugh Jackman bulk up to play Wolverine? It takes more than 8,000 calories a day

Hugh Jackman is taking his return as Wolverine in the upcoming Deadpool 3 very seriously. Posting on Twitter, the actor revealed the high-calorie diet that's helping him gain mass for the hotly-anticipated Marvel Studios blockbuster (bowing late next year). If you want to see that Logan body in action now, you can check out Jackman in The Wolverine streaming on Peacock.

RELATED: Hugh Jackman says he never used steroids to play Wolverine; reveals 'Deadpool 3' timeline

"Bulking. A day in the life," he wrote in the caption. "Thank you Chef Mario for helping me stay healthy and properly fed whilst .. Becoming. Wolverine. Again." Variety kindly did the math on the pictured items, discovering that Jackman's daily intake of burgers, beef, chicken, potatoes, vegetables, fish, noodles, and rice clocks in at over 8,000 calories.

That's 2,000 more than the "6,000 calories a day" figure he provided to Stephen Colbert in January. "I’m building up, I’m [at] 4,500-5,000 calories [right now]. I wore a heart rate monitor as Harold Hill [in The Music Man]. My trainer said 'I need to know what I’m working with here,' because I’m trying to bulk up," Jackman said. "I burned 1,500 calories in the show, eight times a week. And so she goes: 'Oh, you gotta eat!' So I was eating 4,500 calories a day. I'm sorry for the audiences in the front row, I'm sorry for my cast, I'm sorry for my wife. It was not pretty. Now I’m just eating and training."

Production on the third Deadpool film is scheduled to officially kick off this summer, with The Adam Project's Shawn Levy sitting in the director's chair (the third filmmaker to oversee an entry in the mutant-oriented franchise after Tim Miller and David Leitch). Ryan Reynolds is, of course, reprising the role of Wade Wilson, whose team-up with Logan will lead the fourth wall-shattering character to the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe.

"[It's] very much a pairing that the world has waited for for over a decade, [and] I’m the lucky son of a b**** who gets to tell a story about that pair," Levy noted on a call with SYFY WIRE last year. "The potential is so rich and every day that we work on the screenplay, there are ideas that we didn’t anticipate that appear because you’re talking about the ultimate Marvel icon and the ultimate Marvel iconoclast."

Not much is known about the plot, though it has been confirmed that this movie's version of Wolverine will not retcon the events of James Mangold's Logan. Emma Corrin (The Crown) boarded the movie last month in a key, yet undisclosed, role.

Deadpool 3 arrives in theaters Nov. 8, 2024.

Want to see Jackman's X-Man right now? The Wolverine is now streaming on Peacock.