Cable did not make his movie debut until Deadpool 2, but he almost appeared first in X-Men: Days of Future Past. He was originally intended to perish in battle before his role was switched with another character from the series.
The mysterious time-traveling mutant known as Cable was one of the most popular characters in the X-Men comics of the '90s, where he would form his own team of soldiers known as X-Force, whose debut issue is still the second best-selling American comic book of all time. Cable was absent from the X-Men movies until Deadpool 2, where he was played by Josh Brolin. There were plans to make an X-Force movie with Cable in a lead role, but the recent acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney seems to have put those plans on hold.
Related: 8 Superhero Teams We Want To See In The MCU Now That Disney Owns Fox
It seems that Cable almost appeared in the X-Men movies a few years earlier, as Rob Liefeld (the creator of Cable) has revealed exclusively to Screen Rant that Cable was originally meant to appear in X-Men: Days of Future Past. We caught up with him at WonderCon and spoke to him about Cable and how surprised we were that it took so long for him to appear in the movies.
"He was originally in Days of Future Past in the Bishop role and he got killed. And then there was a note that came back that said he's kind of too big of a character to do this with, and poor Bishop got slaughtered instead. But I swear to you... So, summer 2012, I was like, you can't, you can't have Cable. Like, as much as I want to see him, fans will freaking go nuts if they see him and you kill him immediately. He's too big."
Bishop only had a relatively minor role in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and almost all of his storylines from the comics were ignored. That said, there is still the possibility that future X-Men movies could cover them. The same fate almost befell Cable, who would have been reduced to a small part in another high-profile story that was essentially hijacked by Wolverine.
There was some apprehension among X-Men fans when Cable was first announced for Deadpool 2, as his character design was felt to be too over the top to be taken seriously in a movie. The Liefeld aesthetic sported by Cable in the '90s was so divisive by fans that DC actually created a character just to mock it. Brolin proved everyone wrong by showing the world that Cable could be just as awesome on screen as he is on the page (even if he doesn't believe so himself), so it's a good thing that the character wasn't reduced to a footnote in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
More: Exclusive: How Deadpool Created Marvel's Own Batman
