Fox’s ‘X-Men’ romantic comedy was stolen from us and I’m furious
There’s not enough superhero-based rom-coms. Romance is seen in MCU films, sure, but when was the last time we had a superhero movie that was both romantic and funny? (Sorry, Poolverine fans, Deadpool and Wolverine doesn’t count).
Well, we very nearly got a superhero rom-com back in the 2010s, and from an unexpected angle. The much-anticipated Gambit movie—the one that ended up not happening—was planned to be a rom-com. Almost-leading lady Lizzy Caplan hinted at what this Fox X-Men rom-com would have consisted of.
“We got down the road, we were gonna shoot it. 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. They wanted to do, like, a ’30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun,” Caplan told Business Insider.
That would have been fun! There’s two ways it could have gone and I like both of them. First of all, Caplan could have played Rogue, the most well-known love interest of Gambit. She’s a great character and it would have been amazing to see her and Tatum bounce off each other, sparks constantly flying while the two of them can never physically touch. I can picture it now and I like it.
Alternatively, Caplan might have been playing Bella Donna Boudreaux, a woman who met Gambit when both of them were children. In the comics Gambit and Bella Donna embark on a wacky comic-book Romeo and Juliet story (they’re from rival guilds) before things change and a marriage is arranged between them. That sounds like an amazing plotline to take to the big screen, and might be what Caplan is talking about.
We were deprived of the Gambit movie
Whatever the exact plotline was meant to be, the “screwball romantic comedy” of the X-Men world never happened in the end. The movie was scrapped, and Channing Tatum wouldn’t play Gambit until 2024, when he appeared in an unexpected extended cameo in Deadpool and Wolverine. But frankly, I don’t think Deadpool and Wolverine was the best showcase for Tatum’s talents. (Sorry. I am the internet’s number one Deadpool and Wolverine hater). He really didn’t have very much screentime and there was, of course, no big romance for him.
It’s good that Tatum got to play Gambit eventually, but honestly, he deserved more. I think Tatum is wonderful in romcoms (his box office bomb Fly Me to the Moon is actually one of my favorite movies) and I’d have loved to see him in an X-Men flavored one. I hear that Disney’s acquisition of Fox was the final nail in the coffin for Gambit, so I blame them. Dammit Disney! You’re supposed to make dreams come true, not destroy them!
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