The Channing Tatum ‘Gambit’ Movie Was Supposed to Feature X-Men Villain Mister Sinister

Remember the Gambit movie? Channing Tatum was all set to star as the Cajun mutant (even getting an atrocious haircut for the role) in a buzzy X-Men solo spin-off movie that went through numerous directors and writers before falling into oblivion after the Disney-Fox merger. Doug Liman was the last director to be attached to the film before he hammered the last nail in its coffin with an unforgiving, “It’s done.” But as recently as 2016, Gambit wasn’t done. X-Men: Apocalypse writer and Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg revealed that the nonsensical end-credits scene in Apocalypse were actually planting the seeds for a future Gambit film, teasing the film’s original intended villain, Mister Sinister.

During a watch-along even of X-Men: Days of Future Past with with IGN, Kinberg dropped some trivia about the future plans for 20th Century Fox’s now-dead X-Men franchise. Kinberg revealed that the end credits sequence from X-Men: Apocalypse was supposed to set up Mister Sinister, a notorious gene-splicing villain who has frequently clashed with the X-Men:

“We had a tease of it at the end of Apocalypse. The Essex Corp is something that you see in a tag at the end of Apocalypse. We had talked about doing something with him, and I won’t get into the specifics of it since it’s no longer a 20th Century Fox property and now it’s part of the MCU. I have no idea what the plan is. But Mister Sinister was going to be part of the Gambit movie starring Channing Tatum.”

The post-credits scene, if you remember, followed a group of men in black suits as they visit the Weapon X facility to retrieve an X-ray and blood sample marked “Weapon X” on behalf of the Essex Corporation. The involvement of Weapon X lead many believe the post-credits scene was related to 2017’s Logan, but the Essex Corp. does indeed have ties to Mister Sinister. Mister Sinister is a “19th Century scientist Nathaniel Essex was genetically mutated by Apocalypse, who shared his philosophy of Social Darwinism. Becoming the immortal Mister Sinister, he is perhaps the greatest geneticist in the world; capable of cloning, creating, enhancing, and controlling mutant abilities,” according to Comic Vine.

Kinberg clarifies that no one was ever cast in the role of Mister Sinister, so you can put to bed those rumors that Jon Hamm would appear as the villain in New Mutants. Honestly, it’s all par for the course for a movie that was so long embattled as Gambit was.