Comic-Con is about representing your favorite fandom, and few Hollywood fandoms are as strong as ’s love for Gambit.
Tatum, 44, wore a faded Gambit T-shirt (emblazoned with the phrase “check your pockets”) at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, July 25. The black top was the same one the actor wore to SDCC 2015 to promote a then-upcoming Gambit film.
Tatum pushed to make a movie about the Cajun X-Man with the power to charge objects with kinetic energy for over a decade. That movie famously stalled out, even as other X-Men movies charged ahead. In 2019, Tatum offered to direct the movie himself if it would move the project forward. However, a stand-alone movie about the superpowered Louisiana pickpocket wasn’t in the cards.
“The studio really didn’t want us to direct it,” Tatum told Variety in 2023. “They wanted anybody but us, essentially, because we had never directed anything.”
Tatum finally got to portray the mutant Remy LeBeau in the multiversal romp Deadpool & Wolverine, which was screened just before his surprise appearance in Hall H on Thursday. While promoting the movie alongside and at San Diego Comic-Con, Tatum made a winking reference to his long-forgotten film in his choice of t-shirt.
Gambit has been a fan favorite amongst the X-Men faithful since he was created by Chris Claremont in 1990. He featured heavily in the X-Men animated series throughout the ‘90s, but his live action adaptation has languished as other passion projects (Deadpool among them) have gone on to be their own franchises.
Gambit has appeared in the live-action X-Men movies just once in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The Prince of Thieves was played by Friday Night Lights’ (while Tatum was busy filming the GI Joe movies). That movie was also the launching point of Ryan Reynolds’ run as Deadpool. The critically-panned movie famously sewed the talkative, wise-cracking Deadpool’s mouth shut, leading Reynolds to push for a more faithful adaptation of the “Merc with a Mouth.”
Tatum seems to have let the Gambit project go, with his winking cameo alongside fellow Marvel cast-offs like ’ Blade and ’s Elektra being the character’s only probable silver screen appearance. Garner, Snipes, Tatum, (Johnny Storm) and (Laura/X-23) all got a chance to take a bow at Thursday’s Comic-Con panel — and Tatum doesn’t expect much more when it comes to his beloved superhero.
“It got swallowed up into Disney by way of Marvel when they bought Fox, and ultimately I just think that the tone of the movie we wanted to make was very far from what they wanted to do — or, you know, maybe they’re waiting to see how they do it with us or without us. We call every once in a while, but we’ve got to spiritually, emotionally, kind of mentally let it go,” he told Variety.
