While it has been assumed for a while now that the quality of a Gambit movie was holding it back, that has been dismissed by former director Rupert Wyatt. It looks like it was more about 20th Century Fox reacting to their own failures with Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four (reshoots handled by Simon Kinberg).
In a new interview with Wyatt, he tells ComicsBeat while promoting his new movie Captive State that Fantastic Four’s box office failure was really behind his exit, as the studio was scared about the budget they were giving them and cut it so much that it was almost impossible to deliver a movie with the script they were working with at the time.
“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,? he said. “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.?
“All I know is Channing had a really, really wonderful idea for what that film could and should be,? Wyatt said graciously about the chances of that film still happening. “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.?
With Disney’s merger with 21st Century officially set to close by March 20th, there doesn’t seem to be a chance that Fox will be able to get filming underway before then and the project will be in the hands of Disney very soon. The project could be carried over to Marvel Studios if they feel like they want to make it as Gambit becomes a Marvel Studios character. Luckily, Channing Tatum’s incarnation had zero connections to the Singerverse allowing him to possibly make the jump, that’s if Marvel wants him in the role or wants to make the movie.
I think we’re still months away from hearing what Kevin Feige plans on doing with the Fox characters as they’re still actively focused on the film projects already have committed to. Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home are coming to the big screen this year, while Black Widow, The Eternals, Black Panther 2, and Doctor Strange 2 are about to shoot or will shoot by next year.
SOURCE: COMICS BEAT
