Tatum: First draft of GAMBIT screenplay is “killer.”

Channing Tatum appears in the latest issue of Empire Magazine and opens up about his fascination with the mutant Remy LeBeau and bringing GAMBIT to the big screen.

“I love Gambit,” says Tatum says, enthusiastically. “I grew up in the South; my father’s from Loiuisiana. 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!”

Reportedly based on a treatment by Gambit co-creator Chris Claremont, Tatum reveals that writer Josh Zetumer has completed the first “killer” draft of the script.

“Josh Zetumer just turned in the first draft of the script, and it’s killer,” he says. “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 little bit. 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.”

Thanks to Josh Wilding at Comic Book Movies for the heads up!