Many movies - particular in the comic book/superhero genre - enter the early stages of development only to fall by the wayside before production can begin, but it sounds like Gambit came closer than most to becoming a reality.
Channing Tatum, who was attached to play the card-flinging Cajun of the title, has previously revealed that 20th Century Fox was hesitant to move forward because the higher-ups didn't want the actor and his filmmaking partner Reid Carolin to helm the movie, and the Dog co-director has now weighed in with some new details of his own.
According to Carolin, they worked on “multiple versions of the script and finally found the one that I think that was going to be really awesome,” and were just "a few months away from shooting when ultimately Disney scrapped it."
“I think it played really well in the Deadpool universe at Fox, Emma Watts had really championed it at Fox,” he tells The Playlist. “They made Deadpool at Fox, and they understood that when you went a little punk rock with these characters you could pop some wheelies and really attract an audience.”
Carolin didn't elaborate on why Disney ultimately decided to ditch the film so late in the game, but he did share some intriguing new plot details, describing the movie as "a mutant Goodfellas."
“We made this world in New Orleans that was a city of mutants that didn’t care about saving the world,” he explained. “They went there so they could use their powers to party and hook up, and their hands could fry the grease at MacDonald’s and whatever else, and the hardest thing for them to do was to fall in love because they could read each other’s minds. Or when they got into a fight, they could turn a table into a grenade and send their partner to the hospital or whatever. So, it was all this kind of low-level mutant fights and disagreements and we set in this world of the Mafia—almost kind of like a mutant Goodfellas in New Orleans.”
It certainly sounds like an interesting premise, and should Marvel Studios ever hope to develop a solo outing for Gambit (it seems highly unlikely, but you never know!), Carolin hopes they'll give him and Tatum a call.
"I hold out hope that maybe someday it’ll come back," he admitted. "Channing is perfect for the role, and as long as they keep making Deadpool a character, he’ll need a world to play in and… if they want some more characters like that, I think [they should] come our way.”