The Gambit solo movie has been sitting in development hell for so many years that it’s felt like more of a running joke than an actual film in the works, and with the Disney/Fox deal soon to come into effect, the shift in ownership may well serve as the final killing blow for the Channing Tatum-led flick.
That being said, Gambit has yet to be officially axed, but a new report from Deadline tells us that the project isn’t “bubbling in development” right now. The article also adds that the film’s fate ultimately lies with Disney. As longtime X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner put it at the TCAs on Monday, “it’s all in Disney’s playground and they get to decide.”
Though Fox currently has a release date set of March 13th, 2020, for Gambit, it’s long been widely assumed that the movie isn’t going to make that deadline, especially when the feature has yet to find a director. Over the years, the likes of Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) and Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) have all been attached to the project, but with no one at the helm right now, Channing Tatum recently offered to get behind the camera himself and finally get this movie finished.
Regardless, if a Gambit spinoff ever sees the light of day, it’s likely to turn out very differently from whatever Fox has in mind, seeing how Disney’s expected to hit the reset button on the X-Men franchise. Time will tell what, if anything, Marvel Studios has planned for the mutant, but first, Dark Phoenix will be completing its own rocky journey to theaters when it comes out on June 7th, 2019.