‘Planet Of The Apes’ Director Rupert Wyatt Is Directing Channing Tatum’s Gambit Movie

Rupert-Wyatt-Tatum-Gambit
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Channing Tatum has been talking about playing Gambit since even before he burned his penis that one time, but it wasn’t until he became an A-list movie star that anyone cared. After a successful pair of X-Men movies and a career ascendancy for Tatum, the joke that once was “C-Tates in an X-Men spinoff” suddenly became music to a studio exec’s ears (and loins). Until recently, the only roadblock was the lack of a director. Today, Entertainment Weekly reports that Gambit has found its director: Rupert Wyatt, previously of Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

20th Century Fox’s Gambit, starring Channing Tatum as the titular Cajun mutant, has finally found its director: EW can exclusively reveal that Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) will helm the mutant movie.

Tatum is producing the film along with Reid Carolin, Lauren Schuler Donner, and Simon Kinberg, and it’s scheduled for release on Oct. 7, 2016. (Via Entertainment Weekly)

While Wyatt is best known for the good, dumb fun Rise of the Planet of the Apes (ROTPATA, not to be confused with the more recent and not as good DOTPOTA, directed by Matt Reeves), he last directed The Gambler, starring C-Tates’ spiritual predecessor, Mark Wahlberg. That one was… uh… not very good. But turning Channing Tatum into a swaggering Cajun superhero in an action movie sounds a lot more in line with what Wyatt did in ROTPOTA than with trying to turn Mark Wahlberg into a fatalistic English professor like he tried to do in The Gambler.

Interestingly, Wyatt was not on the alleged shortlist of directors that Tatum wanted (Darren Aronofsky, Bennett Miller, J.C. Chandor and Gareth Evans). Nonetheless, Wyatt seems like a decent choice, even if he was sloppy fifths. Those other guys are going to be sorry they said no to C-Tates, good on Rupert Wyatt for taking the call — a call that I like to imagine began with “Please hold for Mr. Tatum. (…) Ay what up, it’s ya boy C-Tates.”

(Via Entertainment Weekly and IMDb)

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