Channing Tatum Loves Gambit's Cajun Culture

Channing Tatum explains why Gambit's cultural background was such a big draw for him when he was first introduced to the character at a young age. Despite the recent resurgence of 20th Century Fox's X-Men cinematic universe, following the massive critical and financial successes of films like Logan and Deadpool, Gambit is still a character that has yet to be really represented correctly in a live-action form on the big screen. But when it was first announced several years ago that Fox was in development on a Channing Tatum-led Gambit solo film, with a release date set and a creative team mostly assembled, it looked as though the studio was preparing to give audiences their best take on the beloved comic book character yet.

Unfortunately, the Gambit solo film has fallen apart repeatedly since then, after losing original director Rupert Wyatt and then after his replacement Doug Liman parted ways with the project as well. Ever since then, the future of the Gambit film had been more or less thrown into question, with Channing Tatum recently confirming that the Gambit script is being completely rewritten at the moment, as he and the rest of the Fox creative execs try to nail down the right direction for the film.

So while there's no telling when exactly Gambit will be brought to life on the big screen again, it's clear that the character is still very much on Tatum's mind. And during a recent interview with Strait Times, Tatum explained why he loves that the character's Cajun background and New Orleans roots helps to separate him from so many other comic book heroes:

"There wasn't a comic store, but the cartoon was on TV and he was this cool Cajun guy, and he was the easiest person to play as a kid because you could just unscrew the broom handle, get a pack of cards and wrap a bandana around your head. We had a lot of fun throwing cards and trying to take our friends' eyes out across the living room. He is just cool, man. He is one of the few superheroes that has an actual culture to him. He doesn't talk like a vanilla American. He is from a specific geo-location, New Orleans, which is a really specific thing."

Tatum has proven to be a bit of a divisive choice for the role of Gambit amongst X-Men fans, between those who believe him to be completely miscast and those willing to give the actor a chance to prove himself in the role. But either way, it's clear that the character is one that Tatum has gravitated towards throughout his life, though, whether or not that actually makes him the right choice to bring Gambit to life onscreen, will have to wait to be seen.

For what it's worth, it's looking more and more like Logan and Deadpool have positively affected Gambit on a creative level, with Tatum previously saying that the unique qualities of those films have made he and the other Fox executives more confident in taking their time to make sure they get the character right. With the X-Men cinematic universe set to only get more diverse and unique in the next couple of years, with exciting titles like New Mutants, Deadpool 2, and an in-development X-Force movie all in the works right now. So it'll be interesting then, to see where exactly Gambit ends up finding a place for itself amongst all those other spinoffs and solo films, whenever it does actually manage to find its way into theaters.