For going on five years now, Channing Tatum has been trying to make a movie about Gambit, the Cajun card-flinging superhero known to X-Men fans everywhere. And for five years, he’s been beating his head against a brick wall. Although a script is reportedly finished (“I would say the vibe of Gambit has a romantic or sex comedy vibe to it,” producer Simon Kinberg told IGN last year), the movie has gone through three directors — Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt, The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman, and Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski — with no production start date in sight.
Now, Deadline reports that Tatum, who has been slotted to play the lead character since the beginning, may just direct the damn thing himself, because I guess you can’t count on anybody these days, and fine I’LL do the dishes if no one else cares about keeping a clean house…
Is one way it could have happened.
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Tatum has never directed a movie, but he’s worked with pros like Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers, so maybe he’s picked up a few tricks. And like I said, if that’s what it takes to get a Gambit movie, it may be worth it. Although the character is popular — particularly among ’90s kids who watched him on Fox’s animated X-Men show — he’s never gotten a good big screen showing, which is kind of baffling in today’s superhero-happy Hollywood.
However, even if Tatum steps in to the director’s chair, things could be complicated by Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox. Previously, it was assumed that Gambit would be part of Fox’s X-Men franchise — Game of Thrones‘ own Sophie Turner will headline X-Men: Dark Phoenix later this year. But now, who knows? Is Disney planning to integrate the X-Men into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe? If so, that could throw a wrench into Tatum’s plans.
But then again, what else is new?
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