The following contains major spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine
It's hard to believe we're already getting into the 2025 release schedule, but even before Deadpool & Wolverine hit theaters last year, fans knew it was going to include a massive number of cameos. I remember thinking there were so many rumored stars that it felt likely they couldn’t possibly all be true. However, some of them did come to fruition, and one of the most hilarious developments was seeing Channing Tatum appear as X-Men member Gambit.
Of course, some of you may thinking to yourselves, "Hey, I've watched the Marvel movies in order and don't remember Channing Tatum ever playing Gambit." After all, many of the other supporting actors who had cameos appeared in their respective roles on the big screen at one time or another over the past few decades.
Regardless, the only time Gambit was ever on screen was when Taylor Kitsch played him in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. So what’s the deal? It’s true, you never saw Tatum play the cunning card-thrower before now, but that’s the joke, and there's a whole story behind why it was such a great inside baseball cameo for Marvel fans.
A Gambit Movie Was Channing Tatum’s Passion Project
First, the history: Back in 2014, X-Men franchise producer Simon Kinberg first mentioned wanting to do a movie based on Gambit, the popular cajun superhero, whose real name is Remy LeBeau, with the ability to charge physical objects with explosive energy. Shortly thereafter, Channing Tatum was confirmed to be in talks to play that role--yes a decade+ ago. In something of an episode that would mirror Ryan Reynolds' own battles to get the original Deadpool made, Tatum would become a champion for the Gambit film and fight to make it happen.
For him, it would ultimately be a losing battle.
The film remained in one form of development hell or another for the better part of a decade. There were times when it looked like Gambit was going to happen; for example, I can remember the announcement when Channing Tatum officially signed on in the summer of 2015. The film was even on Fox’s official release calendar for a while, though the release date would be continually pushed back before the decision was eventually made to remove it entirely.
Unfortunately, it appears the movie took so long to develop because there was never a script everybody was happy with. Gambit also hit a snag due to trouble finding a director, with one after another signing on to the project before dropping it in favor of something else, likely due to production delays caused by the script. (Even Tatum himself was rumored to direct when nobody else would.)
The same thing would happen with casting, with both Lea Seydoux and Lizzy Caplan attached as the film’s female leads at different times.
Even when the X-Men spinoff seemed to be getting positive momentum, other obstacles intervened. Channing Tatum was always committed to making it happen, but there was only so much he could do with other projects on his own slate and so many moving pieces falling apart.
It was the House of Mouse that took the kill shot though. Unfortunately, with the Disney purchase of Fox in 2021, the Gambit movie was officially shelved. But Channing Tatum never forgot what happened, and later even admitted to being “traumatized” after losing the film in the post-Covid era.
While Disney’s takeover of Fox would seemingly end the possibility of a Gambit movie happening, there is a bright spot to this narrative. In fact, it would be the very same acquisition that would lead to Deadpool & Wolverine happening, and Channing Tatum finally getting his chance to play the X-Man.
Deadpool & Wolverine Celebrates, And Pokes Fun, At The Movie That Never Happened
In Deadpool & Wolverine, viewers meet a team of OG Marvel heroes who are living in The Void after their worlds have been destroyed. They include Dafne Keen, who played X-23/Laura in Logan, Jennifer Garner, who played Elektra in Daredevil and her self-titled spinoff, Wesley Snipes, who played Blade in his eponymous trilogy of films, and Channing Tatum, who never played Gambit.
That’s exactly the joke. Gambit has to explain who he is to Deadpool and what his powers are because he doesn’t look familiar. In the most meta bit ever, even the guy who knows he's in a movie doesn't know a character who was never in one. Sure, audiencegoers who knew the above story, who read the X-Men comics as kids or young adults, or who watched the recently rebooted X-Men animated series, might have known what was up. (Channing Tatum’s costume is stunningly accurate to that latter look.) But it's likely that a significant portion of the general audience had no idea who that guy was during their initial viewing of Deadpool & Wolverine.
Elektra and Blade have stories about how they were taken to The Void when their worlds ended. Gambit says that he thinks he might have been born in The Void since he never had a world to inhabit. Ultimately, Elektra and Blade want their endings, while Gambit just wants a chance to do literally anything.
Even more jokes are made at the expense of Channing Tatum’s hilariously thick Cajun accent. Gambit is just short of impossible to understand when he talks. Tatum had said he was committed to playing the role with Gambit’s signature patois back when the movie was still a possibility. As far as we know, he never really found the voice, but I found him going hard on the accent here to be especially funny.
When it comes time for Deadpool and his team of misfit heroes to fight, Gambit is especially excited, as he’s never had a chance to have a fight scene. I fully expected the overenthusiastic hero to get killed in the first seconds of the fight, as a way to continue the joke of Gambit never getting his moment but, then, something wild happens. Gambit kicks some ass.
Could We Finally See A Gambit Movie?
So, could we see Gambit back in an upcoming Marvel movie? Channing Tatum's role is played for laughs, probably significantly more than he would have been in an actual Gambit movie, However, it will be interesting to see what the response to Channing Tatum’s performance is as more people see Deadpool & Wolverine. He does get a moment to shine and, amid the fight scene, we get a brief glimpse of what action scenes in such a movie could have looked like, and they look pretty damn good honestly.
Gambit isn't seen after the battle in The Void is over, but we do see Dafne Keen as Laura at the dining table in Wade’s apartment, which indicates that she, and likely the others, have been relocated to Deadpool’s universe. So, if Gambit now exists within the Marvel Multiverse, we could certainly see him again, and perhaps we could see him in his own movie.
As of early 2025, the latest rumor mentions we may at least see Gambit on the big screen again, with some big cameos expected for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. Even if Gambit doesn't get his own movie, I'd expect Channing Tatum to be thrilled to just don the suit again.
All it took for Deadpool to become a movie was for fans to get a glimpse of what such a film could be, and then fans wanted to see more of that. I, for one, would love to see more of Channing Tatum as Gambit. Maybe give him a better-looking costume, and I’m in.
