It looks as though Gambit has lost its director… again.
That’s right – Gore Verbinski is out.
According to Deadline, it looks as though Verbinski has left the beleaguered X-Men spin-off… and now Gambit is forced to look for yet-another director to take his place.
“Gore Verbinski, who had come aboard to direct the long-in-the-works X-Men spinoff Gambit, is pulling off of the 20th Century Fox movie,” they revealed. “This was an amicable split, we hear, owing to scheduling issues with several other projects on the director’s plate.”
But Channing Tatum is still on board.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Gambit has lost its director, with both Doug Liman and Rupert Wyatt attached to direct the picture at various points.
Now, it looks as though Gambit is on his own once again… and presumably the hunt for a director will continue in the wake of Verbinski’s exit. And it’s all happened just as the film was beginning to make some progress.
Rupert Wyatt was the first director to board the movie, later replaced by Doug Liman after he left the project for creative reasons. Unfortunately, Liman then left after finding it difficult to find an emotional connection to the story… The project was then creatively reworked before Gore Verbinski stepped up to take the helm.
Back in November 2017, actress Lizzy Caplan came aboard as the female lead opposite Channing Tatum, and the Gambit solo film was given a release date of February 2019. After Verbinski’s exit, it’s been given a new release date of 7 June 2019.
Where does it go from here?
Well, at the moment, your guess is as good as mine.
If I’m honest, I’m beginning to doubt that Gambit will se the light of day, especially since the project has failed to move on in the wake of 21st Century Fox’s Disney buyout. It would be so easy to scrap the entire project – after all, the character has only appeared on screen during the long-ago (and critically-trounced) Wolverine solo movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
And he hasn’t been seen since.
Will Gambit actually happen? For now, we’ll have to wait and see.
But I’m not sure I’d take that bet.
Gambit stars Channing Tatum and Lizzy Caplan.
Reid Carolin and Joshua Zetumer wrote the script.
Gambit is slated for release on 7 June 2019.
