After years of hoping to play the character, and a surprise appearance in last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, Channing Tatum’s take on Remy Labeau / Gambit has finally made a name for himself. But apparently, he will be undergoing a change the next time we see him on the big screen.
In a recent interview with Variety, Tatum teased his upcoming appearance in Avengers: Doomsday, after he was one of dozens of MCU veterans to get cast chairs during Marvel Studios’ surprise livestream earlier this year. According to Tatum, his return as Gambit will be accompanied by a toned-down version of the character’s thick Cajun accent, which became a running joke in Deadpool & Wolverine. The change was apparently made after studio executives “really had to wrap their mind around the accent and how people are going to understand him.”
“I’m not gonna go full Cajun,” Tatum said. “[Directors Anthony and Joe Russo] want things to be funny, but they don’t want to go full Deadpool. They want to keep the drama and keep it tight. When Gambit gets serious — when he drops the Mardi Gras mask — things do matter.”
Tatum also teased that Gambit has more than just dialogue scenes in Doomsday, revealing in the same interview that he had to be sidelined from a “big fight” involving Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom, after suffering an on-set injury that will require physical therapy. Some fight scenes in the film will apparently be performed by Tatum’s stunt double, with the actor contributing close-ups of his face.
Should Gambit’s Cajun accent change?
The change to Gambit’s accent will surely be met with a wide response from Marvel fans, the same way that the comical effect of it was when Deadpool & Wolverine first premiered. While some fans were just happy to see the character onscreen at all, especially after Tatum’s planned Gambit solo movie sat in development hell for several years at 20th Century Fox, others felt like it made the character into too much of a punchline.
Sure, some of Gambit’s lines quickly ascended to meme status, but others were basically impossible to understand without subtitles, to the point of Wade Wilson / Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) jokingly asking if “the Minions” were the character’s dialect coach. For a character with such a storied and specific comic history, from his partnerships with the X-Men to his romantic relationship with Rogue, the comedic tone of Deadpool & Wolverine seemed to only scratch the surface of what Gambit could offer onscreen.
We not only saw that with his fight choreography in the movie, which translated his kinetic playing card-themed gimmick well onscreen, but with what has since been revealed about the screwball comedy-inspired plans for the ill-fated Gambit solo movie. While we’re probably still a ways away from even seeing official footage of Doomsday, much less hearing what accent Tatum has landed on for it, these new comments at least tease that we might get a bit more of that nuance onscreen.
Avengers: Doomsday is currently scheduled to be released in theaters on December 18, 2026.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
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