Everybody knows that Edgar Wright spent years developing the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Ant-Man before exiting over creative differences, even if he did retain a story credit and executive producer role, with his fingerprints remaining evident in more than a few aspects of the end product.
The filmmaker famously said that he wanted to make a Marvel movie, but Marvel didn’t want to make an Edgar Wright movie, although you get the chance that sentiment might have shifted somewhat on the studio’s part after it became increasingly collaborative with its behind-the-camera talents, to a certain extent at least.
What’s certainly less well-known is that longtime X-Men veteran Simon Kingberg – who wrote and produced several installments in the mutant saga before unfortunately directing Dark Phoenix – revealed to SlashFilm that he’d been chasing Wright forever.
“He’s one of my favorite directors of all time and one of my favorite people, just a super great guy. Obviously a cinephile… I’ve chased Edgar for X-Men movies. I’ve chased him for literally every possible thing. We have talked about every movie.”
While Kinberg didn’t name names, the outlet reached out to Wright for comment, and he revealed that the title in question was the cursed Gambit.
“Gambit wasn’t a character I knew too well. He appeared after my time reading Marvel — roughly 1985 — 1990 or so. [He] wasn’t one that I knew a lot about and hadn’t really read growing up, so it felt like it was someone else’s dream gig. Maybe he means more to people who watched the [animated] show? Which again, was after my time.”
Rupert Wyatt, Doug Liman, and Gore Verbinski couldn’t get it made – much to the chagrin of star and producer Channing Tatum – but hearing that Wright was contacted adds another fascinating “what if?” to the annals of superhero history.