Channing Tatum Says Gambit Is Starting Over

Channing Tatum confirms that 20th Century Fox's Gambit solo film is currently undergoing a script rewrite/starting over from scratch. Just a few years ago, it had looked like Gambit was shaping up to be one of the largest titles in the studio's slate of upcoming X-Men cinematic universe films. But then Gambit wound up suffering several creative delays, including the loss of original director Rupert Wyatt, and the subsequent departure of Doug Liman at the helm around this time last year. And with little-to-no updates coming from Fox regarding the status of the Tatum-led superhero flick, many had begun to wonder whether or not Gambit would be released anytime soon.

While the answer to that question remains a mystery, for the time being, Tatum did offer the first, long-awaited Gambit update at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. Although, all Tatum basically said was that the film was still in the works, without offering much in terms of how it would be replacing Liman or what kind of changes in creative direction in might be undergoing. And now, it turns out that may be because Gambit is in the midst of a complete creative reboot.

During a recent interview with HeyUGuys, Tatum revealed that due to the film's multiple delays and then the overwhelmingly positive successes of other X-Men solo films like Deadpool and Logan, the Gambit solo film is undergoing a complete script rewrite and shift in creative direction:

"I look for a personal connection to the movies I make and it may not be immediately obvious…In every story, I have a personal connection… With Gambit, I just never found that personal way in. We lit a fuse on the first one and just blew it completely out of the water. I think we got lucky – we got hit with some setbacks and it was all for a good reason.

We were trying to do something completely different. We were trying to do something that this genre of movie hasn’t seen before. We kept running into the same problems, and then Deadpool and Logan came through and kicked the doors down. Now we’re really getting to do some of the things we’ve always wanted to do with the script – we’ve just sort of started over.”

It doesn't come as much of a surprise that Fox and Tatum might be going for a do-over when it comes to the script and overall story of the Gambit film at this point, especially following the successful releases of Deadpool and Logan. Not only did those films prove that R-rated solo superhero movies could succeed at the box office, but they were so creatively defined and confident in their material, in a way that almost none of the previous X-Men movies had been.

So if Tatum and Fox are using the confidence of those two movies as a template for the things they can do in Gambit - and not necessarily just things that would give it an R-rating - then these delays and restarts might just turn out to be exactly what the Gambit movie needed. Considering both Tatum's clout as a box office star and the beloved nature of the Gambit character, there's a very clear desire from both Tatum and Fox to make this movie happen. But as Fox moves further and further into its new, post-Deadpool era of superhero films, the real question becomes how and in what form Gambit actually ends up making its way onto the big screen - whenever it does.