The actor claims he is still traumatized after FOX canceled his movie The Gambit.
Channing Matthew Tatum, 41, is an American actor and producer. He is known for his leading role in Magic Mike (2012), and its sequel, Magic Mike XXL (2015) which he produced. He also starred in the action-comedy film 21 Jump Street and its 2014 sequel, 22 Jump Street.
He has also appeared in films like White House Down and Logan Lucky. The actor will next be seen in the comedy Dog.
Tatum was all set to play a superhero a few years ago. The actor had signed on for a solo movie centered on the Marvel character Gambit after the project was set up in 2016.
The actor is still bitter and admits he can’t even watch Marvel movies to this day, after scrapping his standalone movie on the X-Men character Gambit.
Tatum said: “Once Gambit went away, I was so traumatized.”
On his new profile, Tatum told Variety: “I shut off my Marvel machine. I haven’t been able to see any of the movies. I loved that character. It was just too sad. It was like losing a friend because I was so ready to play him.”
But Tatum is open to playing the character should Disney reconsider the project. He said: “Uh, yeah, I would love to play Gambit. I don’t think we should direct it. I think that was hubris on our part.”
However, Reid Carolin, Tatum’s producing partner, told Variety: “We wanted to make a romantic comedy superhero movie. The thesis was the only thing harder than saving the world is making a relationship work.”
But there was a divided issue between what Tatum and Carolin wanted and the studio’s wishes. Tatum said: “The studio really didn’t want us to direct it. They wanted anybody but us, essentially, because we had never directed anything.”
Tatum and Carolin tried to get a movie focused on the Cajun mutant thief of the ground at Fox since 2014, but things change when Disney bought the studio in 2019 and his project get canned. The magazine describes the Tatum/Carolin project as having a raunchy tone similar to Deadpool.
Tatum said: “Most superheroes, their outfits are utilitarian. Batman’s got his belt. Gambit’s like, “No, this shit’s just fly, bro! This shit walked down the Paris runway last year.” He’s just wearing the stuff that’s so dope because he loves fashion.”
Gambit can manipulate kinetic energy at will and often used playing cards as a weapon when he was energized with his power. In the 2019 movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Taylor Kitsch played the character, but the movie was not as big of a hit as the previews X-MEN released by Fox.
He said the film was at “the one-yard line” and they had even picked cast members. He said: “We had cast the film. We’d opened up a production office. We were on our way to shoot in New Orleans”.
Due to Tatum’s commitment to G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra, he couldn’t take on the character, but he felt he would finally get the chance once producers liked him and Carolin’s pitch in 2014.
On February 18, Tatum will be seen in the movie Dog which he and Carolin co-direct.