Channing Tatum has been speaking to Variety about how close he came to playing Marvel‘s Gambit and that losing the role has put him off Marvel movies for life. Tatum and his filmmaking partner Reid Carolin spent four years developing the character only to have it pulled when Disney merged with Fox.
Tatum and Carolin’s Gambit movie would have been in a very similar vein to Deadpool – a raunchy stand-alone superhero movie about the X-Men mutant. “The studio really didn’t want us to direct it,” Tatum says. “They wanted anybody but us, essentially, because we had never directed anything.” Tatum and Carolin have now co-directed the heart-warming drama movie Dog, which will be released on February 18.
Speaking of Gambit as if he’s a friend, Tatum says; “He was just the coolest person. He could pull anything off. Most superheroes, their outfits are utilitarian. Batman’s got his belt. Gambit’s like, ‘No, this shit’s just fly, bro! This shit walked down the Paris runway last year.’ He’s just wearing the stuff that’s so dope because he loves fashion.”
“Once Gambit went away, I was so traumatised,” Tatum says, adding that he swore off watching the Avengers. “I shut off my Marvel machine. 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.”
It is currently unclear how characters from the X-Men universe, including Deadpool will or won’t be enveloped into the MCU. The first ‘crossover’ we’ve really seen so far was Evan Peters’ Quicksilver showing up in Wandavision, which turned out to be something of a red herring. We’ve started to see Venom slowly merging into the MCU, however.
After taking a break from acting, Tatum is back with the upcoming rom-com The Lost City with Sandra Bullock, the aforementioned Dog, and a third Magic Mike movie – Magic Mike’s Last Dance.
To find out everything we currently know about Marvel’s Phase 4 – check out our guide.