Lil Rel Howery Was Supposed to Be in Gambit

Before Disney absorbed 20th Century Fox in one of the biggest mergers Hollywood’s ever seen, there was supposed to be a Gambit movie starring Channing Tatum. Remember that? The 21 Jump Street superstar was even introduced to a massive crowd at San Diego Comic-Con many summers ago. Though the production itself never really got off the ground past the scripting stage, it turns out there was at least one other actor attached to the project outside of Tatum.

Lil Rel Howery revealed in a new interview with The Illuminerdi that he was set to star in the project in an undisclosed role. While talking about superhero films, the Get Out star teased he was supposed to work with Tatum on the cape flick before it fizzled into the void.

“So there was a movie that I was attached to with Channing Tatum that we were going to do and whatever happened happened, it was in that world so…I was like ‘Damn man,’” Howery told the website.

When pressed, Howery confirmed that the project was, in fact, Tatum’s Gambit. “Yeah… I ain’t never told anybody that,” the funnyman added. “Yeah, it was Gambit.”

Since the movie’s been axed, Tatum himself has revealed that it was planned to be a mutant heist flick — part of why the actor was drawn to play the mutant in the first place.

“There wasn’t a comic store, but the cartoon was on TV and he was this cool Cajun guy,” Tatum said. “And he was the easiest person to play as a kid because you could just unscrew the broom handle, get a pack of cards and wrap a bandana around your head. We had a lot of fun throwing cards and trying to take our friends’ eyes out across the living room.

“He is just cool, man. He is one of the few superheroes that has an actual culture to him. He doesn’t talk like a vanilla American. He is from a specific geo-location, New Orleans, which is a really specific thing.”