Originally published July 21, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
Following yesterday’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, Channing Tatum spoke to Comic Book and confirmed that – unlike directors Rupert Wyatt and Doug Liman – he’s yet to abandon 20th Century Fox’s planned X-Men spinoff Gambit.
“Yeah, of course,” replied Tatum when asked if the Gambit movie is still moving ahead. “We’re working on it right now.”
Meanwhile, speaking to Yahoo, Tatum said that he and writer Reid Carolin are having “a bit of a rethink” with regards to their approach following the success of Deadpool and Logan:
“We had a first draft it was good, 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,” said Tatum. “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.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean Gambit will go down the R-rated route, with Tatum clarifying that: “We’re not quite going there, because I enjoyed Gambit as a kid so I don’t want to rule out PG-13.”
Tatum was first announced as portraying the card-throwing mutant Rmy LeBeau back in 2014, and was even introduced as part of Fox’s X-Men roster during the studio’s Comic-Con panel in 2015. Since then, the project has went through a number of directors, false starts and release dates as it seemingly found itself stuck in development hell.
However, Fox has recently set dates for six mystery Marvel movies, so it would seem likely that the studio is eyeing one of those for Gambit (another will presumably be reserved for the just-announced Fantastic Four spinoff Doctor Doom from Legion creator and showrunner Noah Hawley.
