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If there’s one thing that X-Men movie fans know all too well, it’s that they were denied the chance to see Channing Tatum take on the role of Gambit for years, until 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine finally gave him the chance to slip on the trenchcoat and cowl. But what did audiences miss out on when the long in-development Gambit movie failed to materialize due to the sale of 20th Century Fox to Disney, and the X-Men rights returning to Marvel? Tatum’s almost co-star in the movie, the great Lizzy Caplan, has spilled some beans, and they’re… surprising.

“We were gonna shoot it,” Caplan told Business Insider in a recent interview. “I think there was a start date. I had a meeting with Channing, and there were a couple different… we had a director, then we didn’t, but I had multiple meetings with Channing and the other producers.”

So, what was being planned for the movie? Caplan’s update, if true, is genuinely surprising: “They wanted to do, like, a ‘30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun.”

Wait. What?

I’ll hold my hand up to loving a Golden Age of Cinema screwball romantic comedy as much as the next man — Bringing Up Baby is indisputably one of the finest movies ever made — but the idea of Gambit, a character who feels as '90s as any X-Man could be, thanks to his creative lineage (co-created by Jim Lee!) and starring role in the 1990s animated series, as a 1930s throwback just seems shocking anachronistic… and also such an unexpected swerve for the X-Men movie franchise as-was.

Just imagine what kind of genuinely strange, potentially magically movie we’ve lost by this movie never happening…! Well, we’ll always have Tatum’s singing and dancing turn in 2016’s Hail, Caesar! as the next best thing, I guess…

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time, and get ready for all the free Marvel comics coming as part of this year's Free Comic Book Day / Comics Giveaway Day events.