Channing Tatum's unmade Gambit movie had a rom-com vibe, chére

Tatum's would-be co-star, Lizzy Caplan, would've had a meet-cute with the Gambit.

Channing Tatum's unmade Gambit movie had a rom-com vibe, chére

Channing Tatum was holding his cards close to his chest regarding the Gambit movie that never got made. While many assumed the film would’ve followed a Cajun card sharp who also uses those cards as magic bombs to blow up Magnetos, Gambit reportedly had more of a “screwball romantic comedy” vibe. Lizzy Caplan, who was meant to star as Remy LeBeau’s beau, says the film was a “’30s kind of screwball romantic comedy.” 20th Century Fox hired Caplan in 2017 but never announced what character she was playing—though now it seems like she was going to play Rogue, considering Anna Paquin left the series after 2014’s Days Of Future Past. Nevertheless, Caplan says it was a “really cool idea” and “kind of odd that it got is scrapped” because “those movies don’t seem to ever get scrapped, but it did.”

“We got down the road, we were gonna shoot it,” Caplan told Business Insider. “I think there was a start date. I had had meetings with Channing, and there were a couple different… we had a director, then we didn’t, but I had multiple meetings with Channing and the other producers. They wanted to do, like, a ’30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun.”

Dying to share that Creole accent with the masses, Tatum spent years trying to get Gambit in the air. Unfortunately, when Disney bought 20th Century Fox, the Mouse House was less interested in dealing with this competing cinematic universe of characters that didn’t fit into Kevin Feige’s vision. But Gambit is a character that could support a rom-com, considering how much time he spent wooing Rogue on the page and on television.

In 2018, producer Simon Kinberg told IGN that the movie had a “romantic or sex comedy vibe” but still “very much a superhero movie.” Kinberg, who picked up on the Gambit’s womanizing ways, says the character “lent itself to romantic comedy,” in the same way that “Logan was a western” and “New Mutants is very decidedly a horror movie.” However, he quickly clarified that this would’ve had the “vibe” of a rom-com.

“You know, when I say romantic comedy, I use that term loosely, in the same term that I use the term western for Logan loosely. It’s not like they’re gunslingers at high noon in Logan. It’s just a vibe. And I would say the vibe of Gambit has a romantic or sex comedy vibe to it. While it is also still very much a superhero movie with villains and heroes, as all these movies are.”

Tatum eventually did play Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, which, thanks to Nicepool, had the vibe of a legal thriller.

 
Join the discussion...