Why Gambit Was Cancelled? What Happened To Channing Tatum’s R-Rated Romantic Comedy??

Over the years we have gotten to see a lot of interesting Marvel characters being brought to the live-action. The most exciting amongst solo-venture that fans wanted to see was definitely Deadpool. This was mostly because the studios had to take certain liberties in order to make his movie due to the absolutely wild nature of the character. But this project actually paved the way for the possibility of a lot of other projects from the studio. The X-Men movies had always allowed us to see all the characters coming together with their wide variety of powers. There was an interesting project that was halfway through development before being dropped. We were going to see Channing Tatum head the solo venture for a Gambit movie at Fox. Let’s take a look at what actually happened to Channing Tatum’s R-rated Deadpool-style romantic comedy. Here’s why Gambit was cancelled.

Gambit Movie

Channing Tatum is one of the actors who would absolutely fit a superhero project but so far there hasn’t been any chance of that. The actor has proven his worth with some of the most awesome action films over the years. At the same time, he has proven his comedic chops by leading the Jump Street movies. Following the success of the Deadpool movies, Fox actually went ahead with the idea of another major solo superhero venture. It was gonna be a project based on the character of Gambit and Tatum was cast as the lead. Fans were excited to see how it would have gone considering X-Men Origins: Wolverine gave us a poor version of the superhero.

 

Things took an interesting turn when Tatum actually ended up writing the script along with his producing partner Reid Carolin. The actor was excited about the project and even wanted to be involved as a director for the movie but the studio wasn’t thrilled about that. But due to his love for the character and the script, Tatum had agreed for someone else to take the director’s chair.

 

In an interview with Variety for his upcoming movie Dog, the actor said:

The studio really didn’t want us to direct it. They wanted anybody but us, essentially, because we had never directed anything.

 

R-Rating Like Deadpool

The plans for the movie actually started going through. It seems that the movie was going to have a narrative quite similar to Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool. Gambit was also going to stick to the genre of rom-com with an R rating. According to Carolin:

We wanted to make a romantic comedy superhero movie. The thesis was the only thing harder than saving the world is making a relationship work.

We were right on the one-yard line. We had cast the film. We’d opened up a production office. We were on our way to shoot in New Orleans.

 

Why Gambit was Cancelled

All this excitement for the project came to a sudden halt. It was during this time that Disney had acquired Fox and with the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney wanted to approach the mutants in a different way. According to Carolin:

Disney had just gotten the X-Men from Fox. I think they needed to redesign the X-Men from the ground up.

 

Channing Tatum was heavily disappointed with these circumstances and it actually left him traumatized. He is still looking for a chance to take on the role if he is given the offer to do so. The actor said:

Once Gambit went away, I was so traumatized. I shut off my Marvel machine. I haven’t been able to see any of the movies. I loved that character. It was just too sad. It was like losing a friend because I was so ready to play him. Uh, yeah, I would love to play Gambit. I don’t think we should direct it. I think that was hubris on our part.

 

It seems that he hasn’t given up on the project and neither has Reid Carolin. Carolin also mentioned, “I wish they would reconsider because it’s a pretty great project. Maybe someday.” Whether we will ever actually get to see this project come to fruition remains a matter of chance. The MCU is still working on how to bring the mutants in but they haven’t gone through with any of their plans yet. With Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool now being canon to the MCU, we can clearly see a chance for Tatum’s plans for Gambit movie something Marvel would take on. Let’s hope we get a chance to see the Gambit movie the way Tatum and Carolin had planned.

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