At the present moment, we really don't know a whole lot about what Fox has in store for the future of the X-Men franchise. Outside of Deadpool 2 and some sort of sequel to X-Men: Apocalypse which will reportedly be set in the 90s, we don't know much about any specific projects. One that has been floating around for a little bit now is the Gambit movie, which supposedly isn't dead, it just isn't where it needs to be yet, according to producer Simon Kindberg

During the Television Critics Association summer press tour, /Film caught up with Kindberg, who is one of the cheif creative forced behind Fox's X-Men franchise. He revealed that the Gambit movie is still definitely in development, and what is holding the project up. According to Kindberg, it is all about getting the tone correct and polishing the script. Here is what he had to say.

"The truth is when you have these movies that need a very special and unique tone, it takes a little while to find that tone. Deadpool felt like it exploded out of nowhere but it was a ten-year development process on that movie. I hope that Gambit doesn't take ten years, but it takes a little honing to get that tone and that voice exactly right. Really it's just about getting a screenplay that is worthy of that character and I think we're really close right now."

Prior to the success of Deadpool and before the release of X-Men: Apocalypse, the producers behind the current run of X-Men franchise movies, Kindberg being a big part of that, were developing several other projects for the future. One of these projects involved the Cajun mutant known as Gambit, and Channing Tatum essentially willed the project into existence. He had talked publically about how much he loved the character and how he would love to play Gambit. That grabbed the attention of some folks over at Fox, and being that Tatum is a very bankable movie star, the project seemed to come together fairly quickly. But then the problems started to stack up fairly quickly.

The Gambit movie was originally scheduled for an October 2016 release date, but that is most definitely out of the question now. Even October of 2017 wouldn't be overly realistic at this point. The project originally had problems locking down a director, but eventually landed Edge of Tomorrow helmer Doug Liman to take on the movie. Liman seemed like a very good choice, but he also seems to have expensive tastes, and the movie would have very likely had a high production budget. Deadpool was much more well known as a character, and the movie made $781 million worldwide on a reported $58 million dollar budget. That makes Deadpool the highest grossing movie in the X-Men franchise overall, and made Fox rethink their future strategy a bit. There is no doubt that has also contributed to the delay with Gambit.

As of right now, Kindberg may be confident that Gambit is going to happen, but the version that we ultimately see may very well differ from what we were expecting. Channing Tatum is lining up projects left and right, so the odds of him actually playing Remy LeBeau are getting increasingly more slim. Not only that, but director Doug Liman has taken on directing duties for the adaptation of Chaos Walking for Lionsgate, so he may wind up being replaced as well. In any case, even if it is ten years from now, Kindberg seems confident that we are going to be getting a Gambit movie at some point.