In early 2016, it was reported that rewrites on 20th Century Fox‘s X-Men spinoff Gambit had forced production on the film to delay its start date. Now, over a year later with no reported movement, Yahoo asked star Channing Tatum at Comic-Con for a status update.
“We got really lucky. We had a first draft it was good,” Tatum said, “but we were coming to at a time at that creative phase of [the X-Men], where these movies went through a bit of a paradigm shift, where the X-Men movies and the superhero movies with ‘Logan’ and ‘Deadpool’ really broke down a lot of doors for us. We were trying to do some things that we actually weren’t allowed to do, and they just smashed down the doors, so we’re giving it a bit of a rethink.”
As for whether that rethink involves turning Gambit into an R-rated film, Tatum says, “We’re not quite going there, because I enjoyed Gambit as a kid so I don’t want to rule out PG-13.”
It was last reported that Magic Mike writer Reid Carolin was penning the latest draft off the script. Director-wise, Edge of Tomorrow‘s Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) and Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) have both dropped out, and there was a rumor late last year that fan fav Frank Darabont (The Walking Dead, The Shawshank Redemption) was coming on board, but nothing has seemingly come of that yet.
Of course, just because a film is delayed due to creative struggles does not mean it will never get made. Deadpool was famously in development hell at Fox for years before it finally got made and hit big, so perhaps a creative re-assessment is just what the project needs.
In the Gambit adaptation, Channing Tatum will star as the titular mutant, a role he has been vying for for some time. He was to be joined by Lea Seydoux as the female lead of the film, Bella Donna Boudreaux, the daughter of the leader of the New Orleans Assassins’ Guild and Remy LeBeau’s first love, though she seems to have also fallen off the project. No release date for the film has been announced.
Created by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee in 1990, Gambit, a New Orleans native mutant, quickly became a fan favorite due to his kinetic energy manipulation abilities and penchant for stealing. The character’s only big screen appearance to date (outside his name being featured as an Easter egg in X2) was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, played by Taylor Kitsch.
