Fox's
Gambit movie never came to fruition (and probably won't now that Marvel Studios is assuming control of the
X-Men), but no one really knew what happened behind the scenes of the project — until now.
Speaking to The Beat, Rupert Wyatt, who was once attached to direct the film starring Channing Tatum, revealed that it simply came down to a lack of budget. Wyatt explained that the commercial failure of Josh Trank's
Fantastic Four caused the budget of
Gambit to be slashed nearly 10 weeks before production was slated to begin. While Wyatt was open to rewriting the script for the newly proposed budget, Fox opted not to proceed.
“I was very close with Channing Tatum and his producing partner Reid Carolin, and I was on the script with him and Josh Zetumer as a writer. We were close, I believe 10 weeks away. It simply came down to budget. There was not enough. You know all too well about the politics of the business. Fantastic Four had been released by Fox a month before and had not gone well for them, so our budget was slashed quite considerably. The inevitable, from my perspective, was, ‘Well then we need to rewrite the script to tailor to our budget,’ but we were too close to a start date for Fox to really want to go there, so, unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.”
While
Gambit never took off under the Fox umbrella, Wyatt is hoping the film still gets made by the House of Mouse.
"All I know is Channing had a really, really wonderful idea for what that film could and should be,” Wyatt added.
“I know he and Reid are still plugging away at it, so I hope in the new Disney era, that then they get to make it.”
Disney has yet to reveal its movie plans for the
X-Men franchise. The deal to acquire the 20th Century Fox film and TV studios is
expected to be completed soon, according to Disney CEO Bob Iger. Meanwhile,
Dark Phoenix and
The New Mutants will be the last two X-Men movies released by Fox.
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