The long-gestatingGambitmovie remains one of the most intriguing unmade comic book movie projects of all time, and actressLéa Seydouxhas now added even further intrigue. In an interview withIndiewire, Seydoux, who had been tapped for the lead female role, has hyped the quality of theGambitscript before describing the project as “a comedy.”
“The script was really good. It had some funny bits in it, but they wanted to make more of a comedy.”
The role that Léa Seydoux would have played was reportedly theMarvelcharacter Bella Donna Boudreaux, a creation of Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell. A childhood friend of Gambit AKA Remy LeBeau, Bella Donna Boudreaux comes from a rival gang, the Thieves and Assassins respectively, in New Orleans. Their lives cross paths time and again as the star-crossed lovers face off with a variety of different Marvel villains, Gambit using his ability to charge objects with explosive energy, and Bella Donna her telekinesis.
After praising the script, Seydoux went on to commend the role of Bella Donna Boudreaux itself, explaining that it would have been new ground for her.
“I feel that in America people have more imagination. I have been offered films very very far from what I’ve done and I’m like, ‘Oh. Interesting.’ I love to feel that I can adapt myself. For me, that’s very exotic.”
Channing Tatum Would Have Starred as Gambit in the Canceled Movie
Work on the unproducedGambitmovie began all the way back in 2014, with22 Jump StreetandThe Lost CitystarChanning Tatumsigning on to star in the title role. Several directors expressed interest along the way, including Rupert Wyatt and Doug Liman, with Reid Carolin set to produce alongside Tatum. After so, so much back and forth and false starts,theX-Menspinoff was officially canceled in May 2019. Since then, several details have emerged regarding whatGambitwould have involved,with Carolin describing the movie as the “mutant Goodfellas.”
“We made this world in New Orleans that was a city of mutants that didn’t care about saving the world,” he explained. “They went there so they could use their powers to party and hook up, and their hands could fry the grease at McDonald’s and whatever else and the hardest thing for them to do was to fall in love because they could read each other’s minds, or when they got into a fight, they could turn a table into a grenade and send their partner to the hospital or whatever. So, it was all this kind of low-level mutant fights and disagreements, and we sit in this world of the Mafia—almost kind of like a mutant Goodfellas in New Orleans.”
Sadly,Gambitwill never see the light of day, with the project now destined to remain on the “what if?” list of unproduced movies for all time. Léa Seydoux can next be seen starring opposite Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart in director David Cronenberg’s return to body horror,Crimes of the Future.
