While it may have appeared dead, Channing Tatum's Gambit film is still being charged up like one of the X-Man's playing cards. The franchise is expanding pretty significantly even though X-Men: Apocalypse turned out a disappointment, and Gambit is part of the next group of movies along with a Deadpool sequel and New Mutants. Now we're getting updates on all of those from producer/writer Simon Kinberg, along with the briefest of teases about the next centerpiece X-Men movie.
The Hashtag Show spoke with Kinberg at the recent Saturn Awards, and he offered details on when production would begin on Deadpool 2...
“The first thing up, we’re shooting the Wolverine movie right now and we start shooting Deadpool 2 at the beginning of next year, then I sit down and start writing the next of the mainline X-Men movies.”
We already know most of the key players will return, including Ryan Reynold as the Merc with a Mouth, director Tim Miller, and co-writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. It's looking very likely we'll see the future X-Man known as Cable introduced, but otherwise we don't know much of anything about the plot. As the below fanmade poster suggests (it was given the Ryan Reynolds social media stamp of approval), we're likely to see Deadpool return some time in 2018. Fox has two open dates that year on March 2nd and June 29th.
As for Gambit, it's been getting knocked around for a couple of years now, having been abandoned by director Rupert Wyatt just before production. Since then Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) has come aboard but delays in upping the script have caused further delays, and the director has since taken on two other movies. But the film is still happening, and Tatum's writing partner Reid Carolin has apparently finished work on the latest draft because Kinberg has a start date in mind...
“We have a great script on that and hope to shoot that movie at the beginning of spring of next year.”
Assuming that holds, Gambit will probably arrive some time in 2018, as well. Finally, Kinberg didn't have an awful lot to say about Josh Boone's New Mutants movie, except to say it would be "very loyal to the comics", which is what every filmmaker says, and that production on it may begin soon, which could mean anything. So not much there to talk about.
For now, the next X-Men movie will be Wolverine 3 on March 3rd 2017.
