Channing Tatum talks ‘Gambit’, says it’s an anti-hero origin story

“I love Gambit,” says Tatum exclusively in Empire. “I grew up in the South; my father’s from Louisiana. We’d go to New Orleans and I heard all the dialects. It felt so different from the rest of America; it has its own ancient culture. So I identified with that. And he always felt the most real of the X-Men to me. He’s kind of a tortured soul and he’s not a good guy. But he’s not a bad guy, either. He walks his own path. And of course he plays cards and drinks and is a martial-arts badass!”

“Josh Zetumer just turned in the first draft of the script, and it’s killer,” adds Tatum. “None of us were sure how he was going to deal with the X-Men world. But we’re going to be changing some of the tropes of these movies. It’s always about saving the world (laughs), but maybe we’re going to shift things a liittle but. There’s so many ways you can take [an origin story]. You could do it like Batman Begins, or a different take and go the Guardians Of The Galaxy route. All I can say is, I’m super excited.”