It turns out Edgar Wright was offered an X-Men movie: Channing Tatum’s Gambit. However, he turned it down because it just wasn’t for him.
During an interview with /Film, the Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead director revealed that producer Simon Kinberg offered him the Gambit movie, but he ultimately turned it down.
“Gambit wasn't a character I knew too well,” he said. “He appeared after my time reading Marvels — roughly 1985 — 1990 or so. [He] wasn't one that I knew a lot about and hadn't really read growing up, so it felt like it was someone else's dream gig. Maybe he means more to people who watched the [animated] show? Which again, was after my time.”
Screenwriter Simon Kinberg had been trying to work with Wright for a while. “He's one of my favorite directors of all time and one of my favorite people, just a super great guy,” he told /Film. He was particularly keen to get him aboard the X-Men franchise. “Obviously a cinephile... I've chased Edgar for X-Men movies. I've chased him for literally every possible thing. We have talked about every movie.”
Although Wright had originally signed on for Ant-Man, his brush with the X-Men has been kept out of the limelight until now. But it looks as though he had a lucky escape — the Gambit movie was ultimately canceled months before it was due to start filming.
Gambit was supposed to star Channing Tatum as the iconic X-Men character, the New Orleans hustler with a penchant for card-slinging. However, the long-in-development project went through a number of scripts and directors, including Gore Verbinski, Doug Liman, Rupert Wyatt, and more. In fact, the project had been in some form of development since at least 2014. Unfortunately for Tatum, it never quite panned out, and has since been canceled following Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.
“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,” said the film’s most recent director, Reid Carolin. “I’m not going to tell them how to do their jobs, they’re nailing it. 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, and... if they want some more characters like that, I think [they should] come our way.”
Want to read more about the X-Men? Check out why Matthew Vaughn walked away from X-Men: The Last Stand and find out how to watch the X-Men movies in chronological order.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
