Rotating hunk of human kebab meat and person who excels at dancing sensually to ’90s R&B hits Channing Tatum has signed on to star as Gambit in his very own X-Men spin-off movie, according to Deadline.
Gambit, whose mutant power is the ability to control and manipulate pure kinetic energy – and who is also quite good with cards – was portrayed by Taylor Kitsch in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Tatum will take over the role for this stand-alone movie, and rumour has it that director Bryan Singer has “considered” adding the character of Gambit to the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse.
The market for superhero movies is incredibly, hugely crowded over the next few years. Let’s recap:
– 2015 will see the release of Marvel‘s Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Ant Man and Fox’s rebooted Fantastic Four.
– 2016 brings with it Marvel’s new Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange, Fox’s X-Men: Apocalypse, Warner Bros’ Batman V Superman and Sony’s Spider-Man villain spin-off Sinister Six.
– 2017 features Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, as well as new Thor and Black Panther movies. Fox will also be releasing Wolverine and Fantastic Four sequels, while there will be Wonder Woman and Justice League movies and, what the hell, also one or two tangentially related to Spider-Man.
– 2018 has heaps more, including Captain Marvel, The Inhumans and another Avengers sequel from Marvel, and Spider-Man, Aqua Man and The Flash movies from other studios.
That doesn’t include the numerous upcoming Star Wars movies and spin-offs, either. Basically, you can expect to see a buttload of dudes – it’s almost all dudes – fighting CGI foes in years go come.
Channing Tatum, who will produce the Gambit film as well as starring in it, is very good in the sorts of roles where action and comedy cross over – see 21 and 22 Jump Street and the highly underrated White House Down.
Whether his particular brand of puppy dog charm and extreme #swoleness is enough to make his movie stand out among dozens of competitors remains to be seen.
Photo: Tommasso Boddi via Getty Images
