The ‘Gambit’ movie is turning into the ‘Inhumans’ of 20th Century Fox’s ‘X-Men’ franchise. While the mutant movies were in a lull, the studio pounced when box office gold Channing Tatum announced that he would like to play the X-Men’s shifty ex-thief in a solo movie. The film was expected to come out sometime after Ryan Reynolds’ ‘Deadpool’ but has been plagued with problems including the search for a director. ‘Gambit’ was due to already be in production, but has languished for months with no updates.
Well, we have one!
Producer Simon Kinberg clarifies that ‘Gambit’ is still in the cards. (Yeah, cheap pun, sorry.) Here’s what he had to say:
“We’ve got to get the script right. We just didn’t get the script to the place where we all thought the movie deserved. So we’re still working on the script. We’re very close, actually, to being done with the script. And the hope is that Channing [Tatum] has a couple of movies he has to shoot, but that we would shoot at the end of this year, or the beginning of next year.”
Although Gambit was a breakout character circa 1992, he’s not exactly the headlining mutant he once was. Even so, Fox has been trying for ages to spin him off into his own solo movie. Taylor Kitsch played the card-slinger in ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, the same movie in which Reynolds debuted as Deadpool. At the time, Fox planned to spin both characters off into their own movies, but when it stalled, those plans were abandoned.
Coincidentally, Fox planned to revisit both characters last year and as we know, ‘Deadpool’ became a breakout hit. Surely, Fox wants to replicate that success with a ‘Gambit’ movie.
Tatum is expected to stick with the film. Doug Liman (the ‘Bourne’ movies) was attached to direct. At one point, Léa Seydoux was cast as female lead Belladonna but her name is now missing from the film’s IMDB listing.
With things in such a state of flux, it’s unclear when ‘Gambit’ will actually hit theaters although Fox has already secured October 6, 2017 and January 12, 2018 for its superhero movies. ‘Gambit’ could land in one of those slots.
What do you think? Are you still interested in seeing Tatum play Gambit?
Source: Cinema Blend
