Simon Kinberg Gives An Update On The Gambit Movie
By D. Goodman
X-Men producer Simon Kinberg gave fans an update on the status of the long-gestating Gambit feature film starring Channing Tatum.
When it was released in 2000, X-Men was a fairly straightforward superhero movie. Sequels followed, including the better-than-the-original X2: X-Men United and the underwhelming X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
The less said about X-Men: The Last Stand, the better off we all will be.
But the series essentially followed the typical Hollywood pattern of a new X-Men film every few years. And fans seemed content to continue to follow the adventures of Xavier’s mutants in this way.
Then Marvel produced Iron Man and everything changed.
Suddenly, shared cinematic universes were all the rage. You needed to have two or three movies a year, all interconnected and all leading toward some big event to even have a chance of getting the attention of moviegoers.
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You would have thought 20th Century Fox would have been in a great position to capitalize on the trend with the X-Men franchise, but they fumbled the ball a bit. Deadpool only had the loosest of ties to the rest of the X-Men universe and this year’s Logan is more of a standalone tale that a core part of an overall narrative.
That left the forthcoming Gambit movie to act as the first real attempt to build an X-Men Cinematic Universe.
The problem was that the movie has been in development hell for what seems like forever.
Originally supposed to be released in November, 2016 and starring Channing Tatum, the film has encounter several problems. It has changed directors several times, suffered script rewrites and was at one point pulled off Fox’s release schedule completely.
However, all hope is not lost for fans of the mutant Cajun.
ComicBook.com recently spoke to X-Men producer Simon Kinberg about the project and if it is even still going to happen. He confirmed it is still on the radar but may take a bit longer than anticipated.
"“It’s in active development. It’s a movie that we hope will be ready to go by the end of this year and shoot next year. We have two or three X-Men related movies this year so it can wait for a moment. The process has been that Channing [Tatum] is as determined about getting the character right as Ryan Reynolds was about Deadpool and Hugh [Jackman] was about this Logan movie. We know that when we get those right, the movie succeeds so we want to make sure we get Gambit right because we want him to be the beginning of a whole new franchise.”"
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Sounds like Fox has some lofty plans for Gambit. Hopefully they can get it right because the last time fans saw the character was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and fans were not too thrilled with what they saw.
As more information about Gambit becomes available, you can read all about it right here on Bam Smack Pow.