While it was officially removed from the release schedule back in 2019, the long-planned Gambit film starring Channing Tatum is one of those projects that still holds quite a bit of interest for fans. Despite the film being a casualty of the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney a few years ago, details of the scrapped project continue to emerge and now, that includes recently surfaced pitch mood boards from storyboard artist Anthony Winn. In a series of images shared by Winn on ArtStation, we’re getting a look at some moments that may have factored into the film.
There are four images in total and they feature Gambit sitting alone on the back of a truck next to a small home — presumably his — holding a bourbon bottle. As he’s holding the bottle, something prompts his powers to kick in, causing the bottle to get energized and then prompting Gambit to throw the bottle into the distance where it explodes. You can check out the panels for yourself here.
What would Gambit have been about?
It’s not clear exactly what Gambit would have been about, but the film’s screenwriter Reid Carolin has previously described the film as a “mutant Goodfellas” had Disney not scrapped it.
Speaking with The Playlist, Carolin called the script one of his favorites and then offered up details about the film’s New Orleans as a “city of mutants that didn’t care about saving the world.”
“We made this world in New Orleans that was a city of mutants that didn’t care about saving the world,” Carolin said. “They went there so they could use their powers to party and hook up, and their hands could fry the grease at McDonald’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 sit in this world of the Mafia—almost kind of like a mutant Goodfellas in New Orleans.”
How close was Gambit to being made?
Carolin also said that the film was just months away from filming when it was scrapped by Disney and in previous comments to Variety, he revealed just how close it all was.
“We were right on the one-yard line,” Carolin said. “We had cast the film. We’d opened up a production office. We were on our way to shoot in New Orleans.”
While the Gambit movie seems to be something that Disney has moved on from, especially with Marvel now back in control of the rights to the X-Men, Carolin did say that he’s hopeful the project could still come back in the future—and that he still thinks Tatum is perfect for the title role.
“Those guys at Marvel have a really good thing going and I’m sure they have a plan that I don’t know about for the X-Men universe and I’m not going to tell them how to do their jobs, they’re nailing it,” he said. “But I hold out hope that maybe someday it’ll come back—Channing is perfect for the role. And as long as they keep making Deadpool a character, he’ll need a world to play in… if they want some more characters like that, I think [they should] come our way.”
What do you think about this look at the cancelled Gambit movie? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
h/t: The Direct