When Channing Tatum made a surprise appearance as Gambit in last year's Deadpool and Wolverine, it was assumed that he would reprise the role if Marvel Studios decided to include the character in the planned X-Men reboot, but this may not be the case.
According to scooper Daniel Richtman, a recent casting grid reveals that Marvel is currently searching for actors to play the Ragin' Cajun and Kitty Pryde, aka Shadowcat.
This isn't the first time we've heard that Pryde would be part of the team, but if this is accurate and the studio is also looking for someone to play Remy LeBeau, it obviously suggests that Tatum will not be returning - at least, not for the X-Men movie.
Tatum could still make another appearance as the fan-favorite mutant in Avengers: Secret Wars, which has been previously rumored.
We have also heard that Stranger Things alum Sadie Sink is up for the role of Jean Grey, and that there is interest in both Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) and Ayo Edebiri (The Bear) to play Storm.
Though Marvel does (finally) appear to be making progress on the elusive X-Men movie, official updates have been few and far between. All we know for sure is that Michael Lesslie is currently working on the script, and that a director is being sought.
If some of the X-Men make their debut in the next Avengers movies (which they are rumored to do), there's a chance we could get some official casting news fairly soon.
During a recent interview with Discussing Film, Kevin Feige was asked how it feels knowing that "we’re closer to seeing the X-Men and Avengers together on the big screen."
"It is extremely emotional, on a personal level, to have done a movie with Hugh after 25 years and me being a small part of that first X-Men movie. And knowing that, thanks to various corporate studio entity deals, we now have 1000s of characters back — characters I hadn’t frankly thought about in many years because we didn’t have the rights to them. Now that we do, it is great fun thinking [about who we can finally]. Our animated series X-Men ’97 was sort of the first taste of people reuniting with the X-Men mythology and that storyline. The response to that series just further excited us about how to bring the soap opera and the saga of the mutants to the MCU."