Simon Kinberg Talks Gambit Delays

By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS)

Fox’s development on Gambit has been pretty stop and go since Channing Tatum was hired to play the Ragin’ Cajun. Everything from directorial changes, to release schedule delays, to even Tatum almost dropping out have occurred.

While no new release date has been given to Gambit, Slash Film had a chance to sit down with producer Simon Kinberg and ask him about the gestating project. Here’s what the producer said:

“I think the truth is when you have these movies that need a very special and unique tone, it takes a little while to find that tone. Deadpool feels like it exploded out of nowhere, but it was a ten-year development process on that movie. I think it was honed over those 10 years. I hope that Gambit doesn’t take 10 years but it takes a little honing to get that tone and that voice exactly right. The character has such a specific voice in the comic in the same way that Deadpool has a specific voice in the comic, that we want to make sure that we capture that voice on the page. Really it’s just about getting a screenplay that is worthy of that character and I think we’re really close right now.”

Being a producer and mastermind for the entire X-Men/Fantastic Four universe over at Fox, I obviously expect some spin, but there’s a glaring example here. Deadpool’s ten year development is a bit misleading, as the character, which was developed for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was conceptually thought of as a possible character that could spinoff from the film. And was subsequently forgotten in favor of rebooting the character. Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were hired to write the screenplay back in January 2010, when the whole project was shelved.

In fact, the writers suspect about 70% of the original draft made it onto the screen, and any of the changes made to the screenplay tended to be because of budgetary cuts, some of which were last minute, giving you an indication at how much faith the studio had in Deadpool before it became a huge hit.

They also wrote a PG-13 draft, because Fox thought an R film wouldn’t sell, and tried to get it closer in tone to the established X-Men films. The bottom line is that Deadpool wasn’t honed over ten years, it was shelved because Fox didn’t believe in the project, and it was only the fan reaction to the leaked test footage and urging by James Cameron and David Fincher that got the film made.

Having said all that, I think Kinberg is being honest that they’re trying to figure out the tone for Gambit, because the X-Men films are in a bit disarray. The biggest X-Men hit is, ironically, Deadpool with $782.6 million, while Fantastic Four was an unmitigated disaster. Ever though X-Men: Apocalypse did well at the box office with $534.6 million, it’s still considered a critical misfire and made $200 million less than its predecessor, the terrific X-Men: Days of Future Past.

To put in another way, 20th Century Fox would kill to pull in the numbers that Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment did with Batman V Superman ($872+ million worldwide take). I don’t know if Gambit is in trouble, but I do think that Fox is taking a hard look at which way to take its X-Men films next, though Deadpool 2 is obviously happening. The silver lining here is that at least they’re paying attention.