Last Night in Soho director Edgar Wright has revealed why he declined to helm the scrapped Gambit solo film starring Channing Tatum.
“Gambit wasn’t a character I knew too well. He appeared after my time reading Marvels — roughly 1985-1990 or so,” Wright told /Film. “[He] wasn’t one that I knew a lot about and hadn’t really read growing up, so it felt like it was someone else’s dream gig. Maybe he means more to people who watched the [animated] show? Which again, was after my time.”
Why didn’t the Gambit movie come to fruition?
Planned as a spin-off of 20th Century Fox‘s X-Men film franchise, the Gambit film went through numerous writers and directors before ultimately being shelved when Disney acquired Fox in 2019. Tatum, who was attached to star as the Cajun X-Man, was saddened by this development. Earlier this year, he told Vanity Fair that he had to “spiritually, emotionally, [and] kind of mentally let it go.”
“It got swallowed up into Disney by way of Marvel when they bought Fox, and ultimately I just think that the tone of the movie we wanted to make was very far from what they wanted to do– or, you know, maybe they’re waiting to see how they do it with us or without us,” Tatum explained.
This wasn’t the first time the actor spoke about the canceled project. In a 2022 interview with Variety, Tatum said he was “so traumatized” when the Gambit project went away that he was unable to even engage with Marvel movies anymore. “I shut off my Marvel machine,” he said. “I haven’t been able to see any of the movies. I loved that character. It was just too sad. It was like losing a friend because I was so ready to play him.”
