Channing Tatum’s Gambit co-star Lizzy Caplan is sharing plot details on the comic book movie that was set to go into production, but was dropped just weeks before filming began.
Tatum was tapped to play the X-Men hero, who can turn a deck of cards into a weapon, in his own spinoff film. But the title was axed after Disney acquired Fox, which owned the movie rights to certain Marvel characters.
“It was a really cool idea,” Caplan tells Business Insider of Tatum’s cancelled Gambit movie. “It’s kind of odd that it got scrapped. Those movies don’t seem to ever get scrapped, but it did.”
Caplan says that the film was “down the road” and they were “gonna shoot it.”
“I think there was a start date. I had had meetings with Channing … we had a director, then we didn’t, but I had multiple meetings with Channing and the other producers,” she said. “They wanted to do, like, a ’30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun.”
But Caplan wasn’t broken up that it was scrubbed.
“I had a lot of stress about doing that kind of movie even then,” she says. “So now I’m pretty OK not doing one of those movies.”
Following Disney’s merger with Fox in 2019, the Gambit movie was put on hold indefinitely. But Tatum was able to play the hero opposite Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine.
Once his cameo alongside Wesley Snipes’ Blade, Jennifer Garner’s Electra and Chris Evans’ Human Torch (all remnants from the Fox era) became public last summer, Tatum took to social media to gush about getting a chance to return to the role.
“I thought I had lost Gambit forever. But (Reynolds) fought for me and Gambit,” Tatum wrote in a post on X. “I will owe him probably forever. Cause I’m not sure how I could ever do something that would be equal to what this has meant to me. I love ya buddy … I’m so grateful to be in this movie. It’s a masterpiece in my opinion. And just pure bad ass joy. I was literally screaming in the theatre.”
After his scene-stealing cameo left fans clamouring for more, Tatum said whether the Cajun superhero reappears in a future Marvel movie is up to studio boss Kevin Feige.
Back in 2022, Tatum told Variety that he had been left “traumatized” after trying for a decade to make the movie only to see it get dumped so close to the starting line.
“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,” he said at the time.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reynolds said that Tatum’s performance left an impression on Marvel execs, but he didn’t know if a standalone Gambit movie would ever see the light of day.
“I honestly don’t know what goes on behind closed doors in the bookkeeping sessions at Marvel, but I do know that they’re obsessed with him in that role,” Reynolds said on EW‘s Awardist podcast last summer. “It’s kind of like the same situation I went through. Once you show that it works well, that’s really what they need. Sometimes they just need to see it in action.”
The abandoned Gambit movie wasn’t the only film Tatum has been left wondering what-if about. Last year, the actor opened up on a cancelled crossover between 21 Jump Street (which he starred in alongside Jonah Hill) and Will Smith’s Men In Black franchise.
“There is a project that was written and it’s still the best script that I’ve ever read for a third movie,” Tatum told ComicBook.com.
Perhaps buoyed by his return as Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, Tatum made another plea for a 23 Jump Street.
“You know what, I’m going to put some good juju out there and I’m going to say I would love to see 23 Jump Street,” he said. “I would love to do it with Jonah, and Jonah I know wants to do it. We would love to just get to go play again.”