GAMBIT Will Be A Sexy Heist Thriller; Expected Start Date Possibly Confirms Move To 2017
A few days ago, we heard that Edge Of Tomorrow director Doug Liman was closing a deal to helm Channing Tatum's Gambit, a major win for the project. Now, producer Simon Kinberg has shared a few details.
20th Century Fox's Gambit was expected to head into production this fall, however exactly two months ago, things took an unexpected turn when Rupert Wyatt (Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes) bowed out of the project and the film was left without a director.
The status of the film was left in a somewhat uncertain state for a few weeks, but some recent movement confirmed the project is still very much a go as a recent report revealed that Doug Liman (Edge Of Tomorrow), who recently wrapped the thriller Mena with Tom Cruise, was in final negotiations to jump on-board as director, which would be a major win for the seemingly ill-fated superhero film.
Over the past week, Collider has been providing great updates on the X-Men film universe, revealing detail after detail from their extensive chat with producer/writer Simon Kinberg. After giving us some great stuff about X-Men: Apocalypse & Deadpool, they're back today with some Gambit-related news, specifically what kind of film we should expect.
“I mean Deadpool obviously has a very different, almost antithetical tone to the mainline X-Men movies,” says Kinberg. “The X-Men movies are dramatic and almost operatic, whereas Deadpool is irreverent and hysterical and sort of a dirty R-rated comedy in many ways. And Gambit will have its own different flavor and tone to it, will be more of like a heist movie and a sexy thriller in a way.”
Now, this certainly fits in Gambit's wheelhouse as he is, after all, a master professional thief. There's a lot of potential to be had here and it may be easy to liken this brief description to Marvel's well-received Ant-Man, which had a similar heist-centric plot, but many would be hard-pressed to claim the Peyton Reed-directed film did much more with its premise than just barely touching on the basic elements of a trust heist film such as Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven or Spike Lee's Inside Man.
On a final note, it's been a hot topic whether Gambit would meet its preestablished October 2016 release date, especially after all of these unforeseen early roadblocks and based on Kinberg's comments regarding the expected production start date, it seems as though a potential delay to 2017 is more inevitable than not:
"We have a director in and I don’t know if I’m allowed to say who it is yet because his deal isn’t done, but it’s somebody we’re excited about, and somebody I adore, and hopefully we can make an announcement soon about that. But we’ve been spending a lot of time together—Channing, [Reid Carolin, Tatum’s producing partner], [screenwriter Joshua Zetumer], the director, and myself—just working on the script, and we hope to start shooting next spring."
It's not necessarily impossible to think the film could finish filming and still meet its fall release date, but judging by how things are currently moving, it'd probably be in the studio's best interest to move the film to a later date, although 2017 is already pretty jam-packed with a handful of superhero movies. Also, it should be noted that Fox, after their recent ill-advised misstep with Josh Trank's Fantastic Four, seems to be taking a much more cautious approach with Gambit (and Deadpool for that matter), putting in extra work on the script and by roping in the talented Doug Liman, who would automatically be one of the most accomplished directors to ever helm a superhero project if/when his deal closes.
The film will star Channing Tatum (21 Jump Street) as the Ragin' Cajun and Léa Seydoux (Spectre) as Bella Donna Boudreaux.
What do you guys think? Sound off with your thoughts below!
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