Channing Tatum Says Scrapped Gambit Would Do What Marvel and Disney Won’t: Let Mutants Have Sex

Channing Tatum finally got to toss a card on screen in Deadpool and Wolverine, and now he sounds ready to ante up again. He still wants a Gambit movie. Just... not the one he and his team built back before the Disney-Fox merger. That version would have set off every alarm at Marvel and Disney, and he knows it.

So where is Tatum at with Gambit now?

Talking to Variety, Tatum said playing Gambit alongside Ryan Reynolds was both a full-body nostalgia blast and a little terrifying in the best way. He also left the door open for a standalone:

"If the fans really want it, I think there’s a world where Gambit could finally get his due."
"It was the most high-stakes cosplay of all time" and an "out-of-body kid moment."

Translation: if the audience makes noise, he will show up with the trench coat and the attitude.

The Gambit movie that almost happened

Here’s the fun/chaotic part Tatum admits: the Fox-era Gambit script was an R-rated romantic comedy. Not cheeky PG-13 with a wink — he says they went for it. The pitch leaned hard into Gambit as a swaggering, messy, sexy mutant antihero. To the point where he flat-out says the movie included mutants having sex. His take: that cut of the character only really lives in a world where Deadpool can crash the party.

Tatum is pretty blunt about where Disney draws the line. In his words, you can guess what Disney will never be: it’s not going to be horror, and it’s not going to be sex. He thinks Marvel could actually use that kind of tonal counterweight sometimes, and Gambit is a perfect place to try it. For now, though, he believes the character is slowly getting folded into Marvel’s collective brain, and eventually someone will crack the code.

Quick catch-up on the would-be movie

• Tone: An R-rated romantic comedy built around Gambit’s charm and chaos — and yes, sexual content.
• Why it stalled: Tatum says it’s exactly the kind of thing Marvel and Disney wouldn’t do post-merger.
• Cast pieces that were in motion: Lizzy Caplan and Lea Seydoux were attached alongside Tatum.
• Timing: It was slated for 2018 before getting quietly shelved.
• Where things stand now: After the Deadpool and Wolverine cameo, Tatum thinks there’s a path if fans push for it — just not with that original script.

What this all means

This is one of those behind-the-scenes pivots that actually makes sense. The Fox version sounded like a rowdy, adult, left-field swing. Disney’s Marvel is not that. But Tatum still seems game, and Gambit just popped back into the discourse thanks to Deadpool and Wolverine. If Marvel wants a slick, kinetic wildcard with a different flavor, the guy is clearly waiting by the door with a deck of cards.