The story of the production troubles surrounding Fox’s attempt to launch a “Gambit” film is probably more interesting than anything that the screenwriters could ever come up with in the actual superhero film. From directors coming and going, false starts, and numerous delayed release dates, it appears that the Cajun mutant is doomed to never appear on the big screen, except for that regrettable ‘X-Men: Origins’ appearance. Oof.
However, in a recent interview with Comics Beat, former “Gambit” filmmaker Rupert Wyatt says that Fox was this close to beginning production on the film. But that damn “Fantastic Four” reboot from Josh Trank came along and ruined it.
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“I was very close with Channing Tatum and his producing partner Reid Carolin, and I was on the script with him and Josh Zetumer as a writer,” Wyatt said. “We were close, I believe 10 weeks away. It simply came down to budget. There was not enough. You know all too well about the politics of the business.”
He continued, “‘Fantastic Four’ had been released by Fox a month before and had not gone well for them, so our budget was slashed quite considerably. The inevitable, from my perspective was, ‘Well then we need to rewrite the script to tailor to our budget,’ but we were too close to a start date for Fox to really want to go there, so unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.”
That doesn’t mean that “Gambit” is officially dead, right now. Let’s just consider it as a really critically-injured patient in the Intensive Care Unit and the doctors have called in the family and the Chaplin for last rites.
“All I know is Channing had a really, really wonderful idea for what that film could and should be,” Wyatt said. “I know he and Reid are still plugging away at it, so I hope in the new Disney era, that then they get to make it.”
The good news is that Channing Tatum never showed up in an ‘X-Men’ film, which means Disney could use him for the studio’s inevitable reboot of the Mutant superhero universe. But odds are, the “Gambit” ship has sailed.