Though the “McConaissance” is all the rage at the moment, actor Channing Tatum has been undergoing a pretty impressive career transformation of his own over the past couple of years.  After working in films like Step Up, Dear John, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra early in his career, Tatum started taking some big risks with excellent payoffs.  Director Steven Soderbergh brought out a different side of the actor in Magic Mike, Haywire, and Side Effects, he proved to be fantastically adept at comedy with standout roles in 21 Jump Street and This Is the End, and he drew raves for his dramatic work in the dark drama Foxcatcher at that film’s Cannes premiere last month.  With these eclectic performances under his belt, Tatum now has his eyes set on something many other actors are vying for: his own superhero movie.

Tatum has been keen on playing the X-Men character Gambit for a while now, and with recent news that plans are firming up for a standalone Gambit movie with Tatum, Steve took the opportunity to ask the actor about the film during the press day for the upcoming sequel 22 Jump Street.  Tatum cautioned that it’s still very early in the story stages, but confirmed he’s as in as he “could possibly be” and said he’d like to change up the superhero movie with this film.  Read on after the jump.

channing-tatum-gambit
Image via Sony Pictures

Though there has been no official announcement of Tatum leading a Gambit movie, the actor said that the deal is just about done:

Gambit is about as happening as it possibly can.  Right now it’s just with the lawyers and they’re all doing their stuff that I’m not involved in, but I’m about as in as I could possibly be.”

Tatum admitted that they haven’t gotten too far in talking about what the film might be, but he seems excited about doing something different than the current superhero genre:

“We talked story, we’re getting into it—we’re gonna try to change up the superhero-type movie, maybe give us something a little different.  In my opinion, Gambit is an outlier in the X-Men [universe], he’s not a good guy in a way.  He smokes, he drinks, he’s chasing women, he’s a thief.  I’m not like an X-Men head but I just love him.”

gambit-comics-1
Image via Marvel Comics

Steve asked if the film might be rated R, and while Tatum didn’t say “no”, he reiterated that the project is in the nascent stages:

“[It could] possibly [be rated R], but I don’t think they’ll ever—I don’t know, we’re still in the very, very, early, early stages.  We don’t even have a writer, we just talked very, very early stuff.”

The actor appeared to be headed towards saying it’s unlikely that Fox would make an R-rated Gambit, but again, the project doesn’t even have a writer yet so the rating decision is a ways off.  Next up in the X-Men universe will be X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility to think that Gambit could start picking up steam later this year.

Watch the portion of Steve’s video interview with Tatum regarding Gambit below, and look for the full interview on Collider soon.

Please enable Javascript to watch this video