Channing Tatum confirms origin story for ‘Gambit’ and why he loves the character
Channing Tatum is going to star in a new film of the mutant Gambit for Fox, centering just on the character, with a chance that fans will see the character in Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse.
Taylor Kitsch played the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but now the Tatum version includes some sort of a Gambit origin story, as revealed by Channing Tatum himself.
The actor talked to Empire Magazine about the solo film, revealing that the first script is done, and that all involved know they have to figure out a way into the story that isn’t too familiar.
“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 bit. 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 about his approach to the character, using some of the same enthusiasm fans heard from him about Gambit in the past.
“I love Gambit….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 set to open on October 7, 2016.
The film’s director has not been announced, but Lauren Shuler Donner is producing, as she has on almost all of Fox’s mutant films, with Fox’s current Marvel guru Simon Kinberg, and Tatum and his creative partner Reid Carolin.
