Potentially good news for those of us desperate to see Channing Tatum comment on whether something is or is no Mardi Gras, cher. There’s still a flicker of hope for that the perpetually discussed Gambit stand-alone film will someday see the light of day. As for a follow-up for Fox’s second crack at their new take on Fantastic Four? It doesn’t appear to be in the kinetically charged cards.
X-Men writer/producer regular Simon Kinberg addressed the health of both those projects when speaking with ComicBook.com. Kinberg, who looms large as a major figure in the Fox wing of Marvel’s cinematic empire, sees Gambit as still in the plans complete with the continued involvement of the movie’s big studly hook.
“It’s in active development,” Kinberg said. “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.”
In contrast, the grittier spin on Fantastic Four (FANT4STIC, if you’re nasty) doesn’t appear to be generating a sequel in the immediate future. Considering that the film was about as warmly received as dog poo in a sneaker, that forecast shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, even with the surprisingly loaded cast of the 2015 first instalment. Kinberg (who co-wrote the last crack at it) is still bullish on the series, though.
“We love that cast,” he offered. “Obviously, the movie wasn’t what we wanted it to be and it wasn’t received the way we wanted it to be…we would love to make another Fantastic Four movie. We feel like there’s a great Fantastic Four movie to be made and I think it would hue closer to the tone of the original, the source material, the comics, but we want to make that movie.”
Plans for a Part 2 were scrapped by the studio after the film’s release and now there’s an extra hurdle standing in the way of the unlikely sequel. Michael B. Jordan has crossed over into the other realm of Marvel’s film output and will be appearing in the MCU’s Black Panther superhero offering.
(Via ComicBook.com & Syfy Wire)
