Surprise,Gambitis still a thing! You’d be forgiven if the long-brewing X-Men spinoff slipped your mind as of late; Fox has been moving full-speed-ahead on unconventional superhero movies and offshoots of the core X-Men brand and after losing a series of directors Gambit seemed to stall out for a minute, but according to Deadline the studio has set their sights on a new director to helm the project.
Pirates of the CaribbeanandA Cure for WellnessdirectorGore Verbinskiis in talks for a deal to direct.Channing Tatumis still attached to star as Remy LeBeau, the playing card and staff-wielding New Orleans mutant with the power to manipulate kinetic energy. Tatum was firstannounced for the characterway back at Comic-Con 2015, where he joined franchise starsHugh Jackman,Jennifer Lawrence,Ryan Reynolds& Co. for Fox’s Marvel portrait. Since then, Hugh Jackman has retired the claws and Fox had a complete change in their approach to making superhero movies, spurred on by the success of Deadpool and Logan.
These days, the studio wants to make superhero movies that flip the genre on its head. They’re looking for new and different approaches to the well-worn genre, and that makes Verbinski one heck of a promising pick. Even when he’s making blockbuster crowd-pleasers and animated family films, Verbinski wears his weirdness on his sleeve. Heck, the first fifteen minutes ofRangofeel like a Pinter play. He’s always been a tremendous visual director, and that’s another asset forGambit’s trademark colorful, kinetic action.
Doug Liman(American Made) andRupert Wyatt(War for the Planet of The Apes) were both previously attached to helm the film. Wyatt exited in October 2015 after a “push in the start date” conflicted with another project. Liman signed on after him, but the film continued to be pushed and he exited in August 2016.
According to Tatum, the delays might have been the best thing for the film. “We got really lucky. We had a first draft it was good,” Tatum toldYahooat this year’s San Diego Comic-Con “but we were coming to at a time at that creative phase of [the X-Men], where these movies went through a bit of a paradigm shift, where the X-Men movies and the superhero movies withLoganandDeadpoolreally broke down a lot of doors for us. We were trying to do some things that we actually weren’t allowed to do, and they just smashed down the doors, so we’re giving it a bit of a rethink.”
The release date forGambitis TBD.
