Channing Tatum's GAMBIT Movie Gets The Greenlight And A Screenwriter

The ever-expanding Marvel movie multiverse has been on a warpath this year with its amazing franchises already coming into fruition. The work currently being done with Tim Miller’s Deadpool and Marvel’s 2015 Netflix line-up, in addition to talks of a female spidey feature film, as well as the possible revival of semi-human vampire hunter, Blade, and L.L. Cool J’s most recent Tweet boasting a future Marvel role have pretty much overshadowed that of the recent announcement Warner Bros. made for its own superhero line-up a few weeks ago; They’re catching up, but in the eyes of comic book fans in both camps, apparently not fast enough.

That said, it remains to be seen what the future of the X-Men saga from 20th Century Fox will hold, although we already have a pretty gnarly idea about the possibilities in that regard. However, we have heard little on what will entail for actor Channing Tatum‘s part in an upcoming standalone push for fellow X-Men member and rogue mutant, Gambit, and the studio is keeping it that way. Fortunately for us, there are signs of life with official word from Deadline that the film has a new scribe in the form of Josh Zetumer. In addition, the report also brings word that the film has officially been greenlit for Tatum, currently on the way with sequel stripper dramedy Magic Mike XXL, attached to star.

Zetumer is prolifically known for providing the script for this year’s Robocop reboot from director José Padilha. I argued a balanced case in defense of that film which garnered its share of mixed reviews back in February as PG-13 reinterpretation that didn’t fully live up to the standards in the eyes of many who saw the R-rated first film. Considering we’re in PG-13 territory now, there’s probably less room for scruitiny to say the least, which if course isn’t to say there’s plenty of room to make a crappy film. Besides, Channing Tatum is a good actor and comes off as someone who really loves the character as he’s so expressed in many earlier reports online, so if he’s the one to be Gambit, it deserves justice with the right director and the right vision for the action and story to accommodate his cinematic re-emergence in superhero atmosphere since 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Tatum is also producing with Reid Carolin, Lauren Shuler Donner and Simon Kinberg, the latter who wrote The Fantastic Four reboot for next year’s release and is also producing 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Stay tuned for more info.

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