There have been thirteen theatrical X-Men films; divided into an initial trilogy, the aforementioned Wolverine films, two Deadpool movies, four entries in a prequel series, and the ill-fated New Mutants. Gambit has appeared in exactly one of them, but his absence was not for lack of trying, as multiple filmmakers have tried and failed to get Gambit to the big screen.
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Gambit was created by Chris Claremont in 1990 and has remained a beloved character in the franchise ever since. Gambit, born Remy Etienne LeBeau, is a mutant with the power to manipulate kinetic energy, which he typically wields through throwing playing cards. LeBeau hails from New Orleans, where he was raised by a guild of thieves who trained him in their illicit art. His adopted father was the guild’s powerful patriarch, a superstitious man who believed that the young Remy was prophesied to end a war between the thieves guild and a local order of assassins.
In his teenage years, he attempted to fulfill that expectation by marrying an assassin, but her family opposed the union, leading Remy to slay a relative of hers in a duel. Remy was exiled from his home, leading to a brief career in the service of a supervillain before encountering a fellow mutant called Storm. Storm brought Gambit into the X-Men, where he fell in love with Rogue and rose to be one of their most valuable members.
Filmmakers wanted to get Gambit in the X-Men series from the earliest days. Bryan Singer, director of the first two films, intended to give the character a brief cameo in X2 before a larger role in X-Men: The Last Stand. The cameo was cut and Singer did not return to direct the third film, so Gambit was left absent from the first trilogy. For the first time of several, Channing Tatum was in talks for the role and seemed very enthusiastic to portray the character. Due to the change in crew and direction, the filmmakers planned to introduce the character in a big way in a later film. Unfortunately, that later film was the deeply unfortunate X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
The film as a whole was rough, but Gambit’s appearance in it was expected to be a breakout hit. It was not, in part because the writing and direction failed Remy in many large ways, but also because scheduling conflicts removed the star set to bring the character to life. Gambit was portrayed in his only live-action film appearance by Taylor Kitsch, but his take on the character was not very well-received.
Kitsch was signed for a three-film deal, but those other two films never came, and once again, Channing Tatum expressed interest in taking over the role. The apparent intention was to spin-off both Gambit and the film’s widely despised take on Deadpool into solo films, but Origins sank soundly enough to drag both projects down with it. Years later, work began on a new Gambit film starring Tatum that would suffer a terrible uphill climb.
Pitched as a smaller X-Men film, focusing on Gambit’s early years as a superhuman New Orleans thief, producers tapped 2014’s Robocop remake writer Joshua Zetumer for the script. Directors including Gareth Evans, Bennett Miller and even Darren Aronofsky were offered and refused the job. Rupert Wyatt, director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, eventually accepted the position.
A lot was riding on the project, and studio heads saw Tatum’s Gambit as a replacement for the franchise’s former anchor, Hugh Jackman’s genre-defining performance as Wolverine. That pressure, along with disagreements between director, star, and studio, led Wyatt to abandon the film. Wyatt would later reveal that the film was tanked by yet another flop, 2015’s Fantastic Four, which led the studio to slash the budget and to refuse a script rewrite to fit the new budget.
On the backfoot and back on the hunt for a director, the success of Deadpool in 2016 led the producers to reorient the film into a more mature R-Rated direction. About a thousand different comments from creators and studio heads dropped in the following years. The film was declared finished time and time again, directors came and went, and the supposed genre kept shifting. It was called a heist movie, a flashy action film, and a romantic comedy at different points. In early 2019, Tatum actually expressed interest in directing the film along with starring, but sadly, it was not to be. Disney acquired the brand, absorbing the entire X-Men franchise into the MCU monolith, and officially canceled Gambit.
The Gambit solo movie may have been canceled, but with the MCU acquisition of the X-Men, the character could return in any number of ways. Fans of Remy LeBeau can still have hope, that even if Gambit is dead, Le Diable Blanc has made his way back from death before.
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