Channing Tatum's GAMBIT Movie Is Still in "Active Development" and Simon Kinberg Hopes Filming Will Start Next Year

Simon Kinberg, a longtime writer/producer on the X-Men movies, may end up making his directorial debut with X-Men: Supernova, but in the meantime, he's provided ComicBook.com with a new update about the Gambit movie. The film has been in development for years now, and it's had multiple directors flirting with the project before the producers finally secured Edge of Tomorrow helmer Doug Liman (who, frankly, may or may not still be involved). Here's the latest, according to Kinberg:

"It's in active development. It's a movie that we hope will be ready to go by the end of this year and shoot next year. We have two or three X-Men related movies this year so it can wait for a moment. The process has been that Channing [Tatum] is as determined about getting the character right as Ryan Reynolds was about Deadpool and Hugh [Jackman] was about this Logan movie. We know that when we get those right, the movie succeeds so we want to make sure we get Gambit right because we want him to be the beginning of a whole new franchise."

I think I've said this before, but it's nice to hear that Tatum and the rest of the filmmakers are passionate about this story and aren't just going ahead with it to hit a pre-announced release date. Hopefully it pays off and fans are treated to an awesome Gambit movie...even if it might be a couple of more years before we see it. With Hugh Jackman now done as Wolverine and the X-Men franchise essentially up for grabs following Apocalypse, Fox is trying to replant its roots in the X-verse, and we'll see how they go about doing that over the next few years.