Lizzy Caplan Says Canceled Channing Tatum Gambit Movie Was a 'Screwball Romantic Comedy'

There are film and television projects that develop behind the scenes that we never hear about. I’m sure some of it would blow people’s minds. Of course, some projects don’t go beyond simple conversations, as James Gunn wearily pointed out recently. The only development involved could be someone saying, “Do you like X for Y?” And someone responding in late October, “Maybe. Let’s circle back after the holidays.” To that end, it’s wild that anything goes beyond this point. But plenty of things can get past the conversation stage, have full casts, and still not make it to the finish line.

Comic book films and television shows are especially notorious for getting shelved at the last minute. Many have heard how close Nicolas Cage came to playing Superman with Chris Rock as his Jimmy Olsen. However, since Iron Man and The Dark Knight kicked off a trend of films that has yet to die, more and more superhero films have come close to production only to be cast aside. Ben Affleck almost starred in a solo Batman movie. An Inhumans movie was planned for the MCU, only to get scrapped. Channing Tatum famously almost played Gambit! There have been many “What ifs.” Now, many are gaining a second life.

The last few years have seen comic book movies plunged firmly into the multiverse. It’s almost as if the big two companies learned about it at the same time (or drooled over the success of Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse). But the multiversal shenanigans haven’t strictly involved characters from other movies past and present; they have referenced canceled films as well. A CG abomination that kind of resembled Nick Cage found itself floating through The Flash. But, more impressively, Channing Tatum finally appeared as Gambit in Deadpool Ampersand Wolverine and it was quite the hit.

Audiences loved Tatum’s Gambit, even if many of them didn’t understand the joke of having him appear (it’s fairly inside baseball/for terminally online folks). Still, people got behind it to the point that Ryan Reynolds claimed Marvel was getting hot under the collar for the actor playing the role. There was even a tease at the end of the film that he could return. Not every canceled project has Ryan Reynolds’ support, but that certainly helped this one. Now, we know more about what the movie originally could have been.

Lizzy Caplan had been in talks to co-star in Tatum’s Gambit film back in 2017. Production never got super amped up, but there were conversations, and Caplan was asked about them recently. “We got down the road, we were gonna shoot it,” she explained to Business Insider. “I think there was a start date. I had had meetings with Channing, and there were a couple different… we had a director, then we didn’t, but I had multiple meetings with Channing and the other producers.” That all sounds par for the course, but details about the film stuck out, with her saying, “They wanted to do, like, a ’30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun.”

That would have been fun! It would come down to other factors (director, screenwriter, FOX), but given how comedy-forward Tatum’s D&W performance was, I think he could have handled it, as could Caplan. That said, I’m kind of glad it didn’t happen if only because I’d rather live in a world where Caplan didn’t do Gambit, instead of doing Gambit and maybe never appearing in season 2 of Castle Rock. “Lizzy Caplan Almost Played Annie Wilkes” would have been a much less fun headline to write.