Director Doug Liman In Talks For ‘Chaos Walking’ – Will ‘Gambit’ Be Delayed Yet Again?

Doug Liman’s Gambit project just continues to look as if it’s not going to get made. First its original director, Rupert Wyatt, left the project reportedly over creative differences, before Liam was brought on board. He then agreed to direct a television pilot, The Wall, for Amazon – which meant Gambit would be delayed. The script went through rewrites, and still is apparently, while the films star Channing Tatum has recently been rumored to eying another project – possibly walking away from Gambit.

None of this has been officially confirmed, but what we do know for certain is that Liman is currently in talks to direct a sci-fi film Chaos Walking – and this could potentially lead to Gambit being delayed yet again.

The YA (young adult) novels are quite the rage these days, and Chaos Walking is a trilogy of books within that genre, written by Patrick Ness. The concept sounds great for a cinematic adaptation – a post apocalyptic world exists where there are no women, and every living creature is able to hear the thoughts of the other creatures, in the form of words, images and sounds called Noise.

Lionsgate is still looking to capitalize on the YA craze, after having produced the Hunger Games and Twilight franchises. The studio bought the film rights to Chaos Walking back in 2011 and filmmaker Robert Zemeckis was previously attached to direct, with Charlie Kaufman and Jamie Linden having written drafts of the screenplay.

????????????????????????????? 'Chaos Walking' ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? https://t.co/riVhOn0RTy

— ???? (@tsuruhara) June 10, 2016

Apparently Doug Liman and the studio are aiming to begin production on Chaos Walking sometime this fall, but Gambit is also supposed to begin production by the end of this year. So if Liman does officially sign on to direct this YA adaptation, will Gambit’s production be delayed yet again? Will Doug drop out and allow another director to step in, or will the project simply fade away all together?

In May, producer and screenwriter Simon Kinberg left us to believe that there was nothing to worry about as far as the production of Gambit.

“We’ve gotta get the script right,” Kinberg told Flickering Myth. “We just didn’t get the script to the place that we all felt like that movie deserved, so we’re still working on the script — we’re very close, actually, to being done with the script.”

It looks like #Gambit won't be filming later this year after all… https://t.co/Wm37pKniXA pic.twitter.com/cXGgadNgcm

— IGN (@IGN) June 10, 2016

It is unlikely that Liman will be shooting both films back-to-back this year, as he is currently working on the pilot for a thriller for Amazon Studios, titled The Wall. Since this is just a pilot, the shoot won’t be too time-consuming and would allow Liman to direct either Chaos Walking or Gambit this fall – but one of them will definitely have to be moved to early 2017, or later.

There have been rumors suggesting Channing Tatum will be joining the DC Extended Universe, as a potential superhero or villain, and his team reportedly claims that he is still very much apart of Gambit. Some seem to think Tatum is going to have a role in The Flash, since the director of that project, Rick Famuyiwa, followed him on Twitter, along with several other accounts related to DC Comics films.

If Tatum is eyeing a role in the DCEU, would it have something to do with the production of Gambit falling apart? Maybe, maybe not, but we will just have to wait and see. Right now, all we know is that Liman and Tatum are still attached to Gambit – which may or may not begin filming by fall this year, or sometime next year.

Lauren Shuler Donner, a producer on the X-Men franchise, pretty much confirmed that Channing Tatum would be playing Gambit and seemed pretty ecstatic about the project.

“Well you know he’s a rogue, Channing. He’s a rascal, just like Remy LeBeau, and he can handle the action, we all know that. He’s got a really good heart, because I know him personally, I did a movie with him. So I think he’ll be great, he’ll be great for Gambit, and he’s a southerner too, he’s not from New Orleans but he is a southerner and he understands that world, and you know Gambit loves New Orleans.”

This Gambit project has been receiving a pretty mixed reaction from fans online, with many upset that Tatum has been cast in the lead. But regardless, it looks like the film will charge on, for now.

[Photo by Valerie Macon/Getty Images]