Though the Gambit movie has gone through many directors over the years, the one who arguably came closest to getting the cameras rolling for this long-gestating project was Rise of the Planet of the Apes helmsman Rupert Wyatt. And if you’re wondering why the filmmaker couldn’t go all the way with the movie, his answer is a familiar menace of recent superhero cinema, the 2015 Fantastic Four.
To this day, director Josh Trank laments how his take on Marvel’s first family turned out, and in an interview with The Beat, Wyatt didn’t seem to thrilled with the results either, recalling how the movie’s lackluster box office performance essentially prevented Gambit from going into production.
“I was very close with Channing Tatum and his producing partner Reid Carolin, and I was on the script with him and Josh Zetumer as a writer. We were close, I believe 10 weeks away. It simply came down to budget. There was not enough. You know all too well about the politics of the business. Fantastic Four had been released by Fox a month before and had not gone well for them, so our budget was slashed quite considerably. The inevitable, from my perspective was, ‘Well then we need to rewrite the script to tailor to our budget,’ but we were too close to a start date for Fox to really want to go there, so unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.”
Since the Gambit movie slipped out of Wyatt’s hands, the film has faced multiple delays, and the impending Disney/Fox merger might well prove to be the final nail in the coffin. Just last month, longtime X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner confirmed that the project is no longer in development, though she did add that it’s ultimately up to Disney to decide what happens with the flick. And though Wyatt is no longer attached to the movie, he still hopes that Channing Tatum will be allowed to wield the staff some day.
“All I know is Channing had a really, really wonderful idea for what that film could and should be. I know he and Reid are still plugging away at it, so I hope in the new Disney era, that then they get to make it.”
Though the Disney/Fox deal is expected to close later this month, it’s unlikely that Marvel Studios will confirm anything about the future of Gambit at least until after Avengers: Endgame brings the MCU’s current era to a close when it comes out in April. But with the future of the franchise looking busy enough already, don’t be surprised if this ends up being one more Fox project that ultimately slips through the cracks.