Producer Simon Kinberg is holding out hope that the long-gestating ‘Gambit’ movie will go into production in late summer of this year. When last we checked, it was expected to begin production in March. It didn’t. Gore Verbinski walked away from the project because he was not happy with the script. This was after the departures of Rupert Wyatt and Doug Liman. For the record, there is no director currently attached.
Nearly three years ago, Channing Tatum appeared onstage with other stars of 20th Century Fox’s ‘X-Men’ films to promote this project, but in that time, the film has languished in development hell. The film has already gone through two leading female actors, Lea Seydoux and Lizzie Caplan. Caplan may (or may not) still be attached to play Belladonna Boudreaux.
At the premiere of a movie that actually got made, ‘Deadpool 2’, Kinberg revealed:
“We have a script that we love — that Channing loves. We’ve met with a bunch of directors in the last couple of weeks, and we’re hoping to actually pick one in the next couple of weeks and shoot the movie maybe the end of this summer.”
“I think the truth is when you have these movies that need a very special and unique tone, it takes a little while to find that tone. ‘Deadpool’ feels like it exploded out of nowhere, but it was a 10-year development process on that movie. I think it was honed over those 10 years.”
Reid Carolin and Joshua Zetumer have worked on the screenplay, reportedly based on a treatment by Gambit’s co-creator Chris Claremont. The story is said to center on a heist.
Tatum was seen last year in ‘Logan Lucky’ and ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’. He has been focusing more on voicing animation lately and can be heard in the upcoming ‘Smallfoot’, ‘The LEGO Movie Sequel’ and ‘America: The Motion Picture’. He is slated to team with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the musical ‘Wingmen’.
Fox still has ‘New Mutants’ and ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ in the can for release next year.
‘Gambit’ still has a release date set of June 7, 2019.
Source: Variety
