Where will 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise be after X-Men: Apocalypse wraps up next year? By most accounts Charles Xavier's mutants are in for a major shake-up, one that will see Bryan Singer's cast shuffled off to who knows where, and a brand new line-up taking over. That includes Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool film, which we assume is the start of a franchise; there's been talk of an X-Force movie and a New Mutants film with Josh Boone. And then there is also Gambit, which will star Channing Tatum as the ragin' Cajun mutant thief.
While nobody would have predicted Tatum to ever be part of the X-Men universe, much less as Gambit, the actor has been vocal about his love of the character. He's expected to cameo in X-Men: Apocalypse before spinning off into his solo movie afterwards, but we still don't know who will direct or how closely it will tie in with the other X-Men projects. In a conversation with Empire (via CBM), Tatum gave a small status update on the film, while also revealing the story will take us back to Gambit's origins...
"Josh Zetumer just turned in the first draft of the script, and it's killer. None of us were sure how he was going to deal with the X-Men world. But we're going to be changing some of the tropes of these movies. It's always about saving the world (Laughs), but maybe we're going to shift things a little but. There's so many ways you can take [an origin story]. You could do it like Batman Begins, or a different take and go the Guardians of the Galaxy route. All I can say is, I'm super excited."
Tatum also talked a bit more about why he's been so interested in playing Gambit for such a long time....
"I grew up in the South; my father's from Louisiana. We'd go to New Orleans and I heard all the dialects. It felt so different from the rest of America; it has its own ancient culture. So I identified with that. And he always felt the most real of the X-Men to me. He's kind of a tortured soul and he's not a good guy. But he's not a bad guy, either. He walks his own path. And of course he plays cards and drinks and is a martial-arts badass!"
Gambit is one of those great mysterious characters, like Wolverine and Boba Fett, who became less interesting the more was revealed about them. The only way to make Gambit cool again is by doing what they seem to be doing with the Deadpool film, which is going back to the character's roots and boiling them down to their essence. Tatum is suggesting that will be the direction they take. Gambit is currently set to open on October 7th 2016, which sounds awfully soon for us to know so little about it.
