Channing Tatum's Gambit Movie Release Date Delayed

After losing its third director before even beginning production, 20th Century Fox's Gambit film is now scheduled for a June 2019 release.

That's four months after its previous release date of Valentine's Day 2019, presumably enough time for the studio to find another director.

The film was expected to go into production in March, which now seems unlikely.

The Gambit project previously had Rupert Wyatt, and then Doug Liman, in the director's chair. Wyatt pulled out in 2015, and the project continued more or less as planned until Liman, too, exited the next year.

Liman's departure resulted in a start from scratch mentality, something Tatum has acknowledged in the past as a good thing for the project. It then brought in Gore Verbinski to take over director duties, but now it will need to find someone else to take the film to the finish line.

It seems to be largely Channing Tatum's status as a Hollywood A-lister and his enthusiasm for the project that have kept the movie from falling apart over the last few years.

The Hollywood Reporter, who broke the news of the date change along with the release date shifts for Deadpool 2 and The New Mutants, claimed that studio insiders are still enthusiastic about the troubled project, which they describe as a heist movie with comedic elements.

A mutant superhero who has the ability to transfer energy into solid objects, making them potentially explosive weapons, Gambit has a backstory involving a guild of thieves in New Orleans, where is was part of the Cajun community before moving to Westchester County and Xavier's School.

A recent report indicated that the story would center on a heist gone wrong, in which Gambit tries to unite two sects of the Thieves Guild -- his adoptive family and that of his girlfriend. Some of the story would, per that story, be told in flashback to establish how young Remy came to be in the custody of master thief Luke Lebeau and how he came to know Bella Donna Boudreaux, the femme fatale.

Gambit is expected in theaters on June 7, 2019.