Rupert Wyatt Reveals How Fantastic Four Reboot Caused Gambit Movie to Fall Apart

The Beat recently spoke to filmmaker Rupert Wyatt, who at one point was attached to direct a planned Gambit movie, based on the Marvel comic book character, which would’ve starred Channing Tatum as Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit. However, the project went through many stops and starts, and it was repeatedly delayed. It’s also gone through multiple directors, including Wyatt.

According to Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), the failure of 2015’s Fantastic Four reboot ultimately killed the version of Gambit he was working on with Tatum. He also expressed hope that Tatum might still get to make the film under Disney after the company’s acquisition of the Fox movie studio. Below are some highlights.

Wyatt on the work he did on Gambit: “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 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.”

Wyatt on hoping Tatum will still get to make the movie with Disney: “All I know is Channing had a really, really wonderful idea for what that film could and should be. 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.”