20th Century Fox is taking a gamble only Remy Lebeau could appreciate. After producer Simon Kinberg has been teasing an early 2019 start for the long-delayed Gambit punchline film, the studio has decided to just go out and give it a March 13th 2020 release date. This comes after a furious shuffling of release dates over the last couple of days,
The timing of this is curious and Fox could be setting themselves up for yet another embarrassment, similar to the frequent bumping of Dark Phoenix down the calendar, this latest time just days after debuting the trailer. Gambit has been in the works for at least five years with Channing Tatum attached for most of it, but the film has become a running joke because of the number of directors who have come aboard and quickly departed: Rupert Wyatt, Gore Verbinski, and Doug Liman so far. The film was originally supposed to open October 2016 (!!!), then when that fell through because of Liman’s departure, it was moved to February 2019 and then yanked off the schedule completely.
So why is Fox suddenly showing enough confidence to set this date aside? Kinberg has teased the 2019 launch date, and says a great script is ready, but there is still no director attached. What happens if they name one and he decides he wants to take a crack at the script himself? Then the whole timetable gets shifted again.
I’m curious to see how this plays out but the smart money is this still won’t happen, and I haven’t even factored in the Disney/Fox deal and how that could mess everything up.
