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If there’s one thing that X-Men movie fans know all too well, it’s that they were denied the chance to see Channing Tatum take on the role of Gambit for years, until 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine finally gave him the chance to slip on the trenchcoat and cowl. But what did audiences miss out on when the long in-development Gambit movie failed to materialize due to the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney, and the X-Men rights returning to Marvel? Tatum’s almost co-star in the movie, the great Lizzy Caplan, has spilled some beans, and they’re… surprising.

“We were gonna shoot it,” Caplan told Business Insider in a recent interview. “I think there was a start date. I had a meeting 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.”

So, what was being planned for the movie? Caplan’s update, if true, is genuinely surprising: “They wanted to do, like, a ‘30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun.”

Wait. What?

I’ll hold my hand up to loving a Golden Age of Cinema screwball romantic comedy as much as the next man — Bringing Up Baby is indisputably one of the finest movies ever made — but the idea of Gambit, a character who feels as '90s as any X-Man could be, thanks to his creative lineage (co-created by Jim Lee!) and starring role in the 1990s animated series, as a 1930s throwback just seems shocking anachronistic… and also such an unexpected swerve for the X-Men movie franchise as-was.

Just imagine what kind of genuinely strange, potentially magically movie we’ve lost by this movie never happening…! Well, we’ll always have Tatum’s singing and dancing turn in 2016’s Hail, Caesar! as the next best thing, I guess…

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• The MCU needs Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik in it (and not just for the X-Men connection)
• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.