I don’t really know how to interpret the departure of Rupert Wyatt from the director’s chair of Fox’s GAMBIT.
On one hand, it’s always easy to take his and the studio’s statements at face value: that the delay of the shoot from November to March just made it impossible for the director to stay onboard the Channing Tatum starrer.
But then again, there’s all this other stuff you hear, about script and budget issues, about Fox’s efforts towards making Gambit their new Wolverine, about how hard it was to get Channing Tatum to officially sign on at all, about how many directors turned down the project before they landed Wyatt, that make the situation appear a little more complicated.
Another problem, which is, as we all know, what led to Edgar Wright being shitcanned from his own passion project, is franchise synergy: Fox needs this movie to land big and strong in order to cement Tatum-Gambit as the new head of the X-franchise, and doesn't want it to exist as an isolated one-off set in the universe (like DEADPOOL). That means a bigger budget and (more importantly) more “attention.” They need either a. someone who plays well with (read: listens to) the big boys, or b. someone who, like Bryan Singer, has a proven track record with establishing a big-budget series. Remember that Wyatt allegedly bailed from DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES because of concerns about meeting the release date, so we know he’s not content to simply playing by studio rules and turning it whatever they assign him. Fox obviously wants to dump a lot of money into this thing, but they’re not going to do it unless they know that this will kickstart the franchise they need to make the investment truly pay off.
Or maybe the script still blows dogs for quarters, and needs a lot of work before anyone with a half a reputation is going to vouch for it and attach their name to the project.
Nonetheless, the studio does seem to be going full steam ahead with Tatum and co-star Lea Seydoux, so they’re likely actively looking for a replacement as we speak. We should hear about who they’re looking at pretty soon, as they got a little over half-a-year ’til production, but who would you want to see helming GAMBIT’s big solo feature film debut?
There’s no way GAMBIT will be making it’s previous October 7th, 2016 release date, so we should hear its new date (2017?) soon enough.
