Before Channing Tatum was given the chance to suit-up as Gambit in last year's Deadpool and Wolverine, the actor was all set to lead a solo X-Men spin-off as the Ragin' Cajun before the plug was pulled.
20th Century Fox's ill-fated movie went through multiple directors before finally enlisting Rise of the Planet of The Apes' Rupert Wyatt to bring the card-carrying mutant to the screen, but Disney's acquisition of Fox's assets proved to be the final nail in the coffin.
We have heard a few things about the project over the years, but Lizzy Caplan - who was cast as the unnamed female lead - has now revealed some surprising new details about the overall tone the Gambit movie was aiming for.
“It was a really cool idea,” the Zero Day star tells Business Insider. “It’s kind of odd that it got scrapped. Those movies don’t seem to ever get scrapped, but it did. We got down the road, we were gonna shoot it. I think there was a start date."
"I had had meetings with Channing, and there were a couple different… we had a director, then we didn’t, but I had multiple meetings with Channing and the other producers," Caplan continued. "They wanted to do, like, a ’30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun.”
This doesn't quite gel with some previous accounts, but it could explain how a "too many cooks" situation ultimately led to the movie being canned.
In a 2022 interview, Tatum shed some light on the real reason production continued to stall right up to the Marvel takeover.
The Magic Mike star revealed that he and filmmaking partner Reid Carolin wanted to helm the movie, and Fox wasn't having any of it. “The studio really didn’t want us to direct it,” Tatum explained during an interview Variety. “They wanted anybody but us, essentially, because we had never directed anything.”
“They would call him ‘flamboyant’ in his description,” he continued, addressing the perception that Gambit is, well, a little ridiculous. “I wouldn’t — he was just the coolest person. He could pull anything off. Most superheroes, their outfits are utilitarian. Batman’s got his belt. Gambit’s like, ‘No, this shit’s just fly, bro! This shit walked down the Paris runway last year.’ He’s just wearing the stuff that’s so dope because he loves fashion.”
Rumor has it that Tatum will return as Gambit at some point, but there has also been talk of Marvel casting a new actor to play Remy LeBeau in the long-awaited X-Men reboot.