-You made the most appearances on "The Tonight Show,"
out of any guest -- it is you, Hugh Jackman, number one.
-Number one? -Yeah.
-Wow.
[ Band plays ]
What? What number?
-This is your ninth appearance.
-Ninth! -This is your ninth appearance.
-I'm very competitive, so thank you.
I love to hear that. -I love that, too.
-Who's my competition -- J.T.?
-Uh, there's a dog named Zippy.
And that -- Eh, I don't want to get into it.
Okay. -Right.
How long do dogs live?
All right, I got to keep going for a while.
-In dog years, who knows? Yeah.
-Yeah. Just let me know if I'm about to be beat, all right?
-Okay. -And do me a favor.
You'll quit at the same time so we can go out together.
I think that's a nice -- -Okay, I see what you're saying.
Yeah. -No, seriously.
-We'll ride out into the sunset, yeah, together.
-Yeah. All right? -Yeah, of course.
So, if someone's getting close to you --
-Yeah, we'll both -- That's it.
-That's it. -Okay.
You heard it first. That's it.
[ Applause ] -It's my final guest.
My final guest -- Hugh Jackman, everybody.
-Thank you. I love being here, man.
-I love having you. The movie comes out December 20th.
-Yes. -And this is a --
It's a great holiday movie. Big movie.
So much fun. Great music.
-Do you go back to Australia for the holidays?
-I go back to Australia.
I will be there on the 20th of December.
-Oh, yeah, wait, you do -- -Middle of summer.
-Hot Christmas. What do you call it?
-Well, it is hot. -Yeah.
-We just call it Christmas. -Okay, okay.
[ Laughter ]
I'm sorry. [ Chuckles ]
-No, in our house... -I might have made that up.
-...it's very hot. -Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.
-But that's not me. -Hot Christmas, yeah, yeah.
-But it is super, super hot.
Although, my parents -- I'm English,
so we persevere with all the English traditions,
which is like, here, we have hot turkey, hot ham,
gravy, steak, potatoes, cooking.
It's literally like 110 degrees. -Yeah, it's cozy.
-The paper hat's disintegrating.
Sweat, drunk, arguing. It's messy.
-It's the middle of the summer, yeah.
-Come. Please, everyone, come. -Oh, yeah, yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-We can come. -Come, really.
Yeah, we swim, we go to the ocean.
Yeah, we get up, we swim in the morning.
We have 30 for lunch.
I mean, I'm from a big family,
but Deb's family does it on steroids.
Like it's literally 30 for lunch and then 100 for dinner.
-No! -Yeah, we go...
Like, she calls it the Christmas orphan dinner.
So anyone who's without a family
or doesn't celebrate Christmas,
whatever reason, they're invited over.
-That's the best. -Come on. Just come out.
-I'm gonna come over.
-What?
-I'll come by, yeah.
I'll come by. It's just hop on a plane.
It's no big deal -- like a 27-hour flight, yeah.
You were here last for "Logan," and I just loved it.
-Thank you. -What a performance.
-Thanks. -But what a cool movie, too.
Like, you really -- I did not see that coming at all.
And it was just great. -Thanks.
And are you gonna miss Wolverine? Are you gonna...?
-Um, in a way.
In all seriousness, a little bit of him, I'll miss,
but I'm -- To be honest, I'm so grateful to Jim Mangold,
everyone at Fox who took a chance on that film.
-Jim Mangold did a great job. -That guy -- Like, honestly,
I feel like I owe my life -- my work life -- to him,
because that movie --
For 17 years, I played this character.
I knew it was going to be my last one,
so it meant a lot to me, and he delivered a movie --
Literally, I saw it in Berlin next to him,
and I was just weeping. -Yeah?
-He was like, "Pull it together, man. You're Wolverine.
Just hold it together a little bit."
-Exactly, it's Wolverine.
Exactly, yeah, it's a superhero movie.
But it's not -- It's more.
-So grateful. And the fans really sort of dug it.
-Oh, dude, I think it made almost a billion dollars or something like that.
-$7 billion, I think. $7 billion.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-$700 billion. -Just in Australia.
-$700 billion. -$700 billion.
-But it's also on
a lot of critics' top-10 lists of the year.
So congratulations on that. -Thank you so much, man.
-Well-deserved. -Thank you.
-Tonight, you're leaving our show
and headed over to a giant, giant, massive ship.
-[ Chuckles ] -Look at this thing.
-It's not a boat. Look at that.
It's the Queen Mary. -Look at that thing.
-What is...? -The Queen Mary --
-It's the size of Manhattan. -Yeah, it's huge.
So, we're premiering "The Greatest Showman" on that boat
because the Cunard Line --
Barnum used to take Jenny Lind when he went on his world tour.
That's the connection. But, basically, he's Barnum.
Barnum was like, "Why have a one-ring circus
when you can have three?
Make everything huge, make it massive,
build that kind of hype."
So, yeah, that's what we're doing tonight.
And you're all welcome.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-We could all fit. It's giant. -Literally.
But it's actually going off tonight.
-It really is? -Yeah.
So, you know, if it doesn't go well,
I might just stow away.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And tell me about this movie now.
'Cause you've been working on this for a while.
-Seven-and-a-half years.
So, seven-and-a-half years ago, I just finished --
-See, so much work goes into these things.
I don't know if people even realize it.
-Well, I just hosted the Oscars.
The producer of that came to me and said,
"Man, you should do what you've done on the Oscars,
what you've done on stage, you should do it on film."
And he had this idea
for an original movie musical about P.T. Barnum,
and I said, "Fantastic."
To be honest, I thought it was about a 1 in 10 chance,
because it had been 23 years
since a studio had commissioned an all-original movie musical.
So, that's -- So all the music is original.
-Wow. -All 10 songs.
And that started seven-and-a-half years ago,
and I'm so proud of it.
I can't wait for you all to...
And the soundtrack just came out today.
So, check out the soundtrack.
'Cause these guys who wrote the music are phenomenal.
They really are.
Justin, Benj, and -- Justin and Benj.
Which is Justin Paul, Benj Pasek -- Check them out.
-And then, how did you come up...
These guys, when you started doing this,
they were kind of unknown. -Yeah.
Like straight out of college. -Yeah.
-They really -- We found them,
and they wrote one song, which we loved.
And at the time, we were gonna go for,
like, whoever the biggest artists were.
We went to Bruno Mars, we went to Pharrell Williams,
Adele, all the writers, Macklemore/Lewis.
These guys were just writing the best stuff.
So, after they wrote one,
one of the studio execs said to Michael Gracey, our director,
he said, "Who's this, uh, Justin and Benj -- Who are they?"
He said, "Oh, they're huge. They're really huge.
They just won a Tony Award for -- Yeah, on Broadway."
-Is that true? -And the guy's like -- No.
[ Laughter ] He goes, "For what?"
And he said, "Oh, it was 'James and the Giant Peach.'"
And he goes, "Oh, fine."
There's never been a "James and the Giant Peach" on Broadway,
but this was Hollywood, so they assumed it was true.
-Wow! -And that's how they got in.
And then they ended up writing all 10 songs.
They just won the Oscar for "La La Land."
They won the Tony Award for "Dear Evan Hansen."
They just got nominated for three Grammy Awards,
and they do not talk to me anymore.
So, uh... [ Laughter ]
-That's how you do it.
-That's it. -That's the beauty.