Channing Tatum eyed for Gambit movie

You might remember seeing Gambit once already in X-Men Origins: Wolverine where he was somewhat poorly portrayed by Taylor Kitsch. Producer Lauren Shuler Donner is apparently trying to get Fox on board to bring the card-throwing thief back to the big screen, but instead of bringing back Kitsch she has been negotiating with Channing Tatum.

Shuler Donner spoke with Empire and flat out told them she is trying to make a stand-alone Gambit movie:

"I'm dying to do a Gambit movie with Channing Tatum that doesn't have to be a great big movie. It's a thief in New Orleans, it's a whole different story. He's on board, and I have to get the studio on board. How can anyone resist Channing? He's such a sweetheart."

Channing Tatum had this to say about the potential project:

“I would like to play Gambit. Gambit’s my favourite. I’m from New Orleans, around that area. My dad’s from New Orleans, and I like to do a Cajun accent. I could do it for real. No knock on Taylor Kitsch, though, ’cause I actually like his Gambit, but I’ve always lived around Cajun people. Gambit was always like the woman-loving, cigarette-smoking, drinking guy. He was the punk rock of all the superheroes. He’s a thief. He kind of rode the line.”

Given the fact that Fox seems fully resistant to bring a much desired R-rated Deadpool movie to the big screen, Gambit could be a nice bet for a low level X-Men movie. You wouldn't need a lot of mutants to appear and due to the nature of the character, it probably wouldn't get anything worse than a PG-13 rating. I don't think Channing Tatum would necessarily be my first choice to play Gambit, but he definitely couldn't be worse than Taylor Kitsch was.