Showing off some of the betting man’s savvy he picked up while directing Mark Wahlberg in The Gambler, Rupert Wyatt has announced that he’s stepping down from Channing Tatum’s upcoming superhero flick Gambit. Wyatt has said that he was “very much looking forward to working with my friend Channing and the team at Fox,” but cited scheduling conflicts as his reason for leaving the project. According to The Hollywood Reporter, though, Wyatt left the film due to script issues that have expanded its budget (possibly by adding more dialogue for the mutant Cajun card sharp, forcing production to spend more and more money on accent-nullifying ear plugs for cast and crew.)
A spinoff to Fox’s long-running X-Men franchise, Gambit is being viewed by optimistic studio executives as a possible replacement for Hugh Jackman’s soon-to-retire Wolverine, possibly because studio executives never spent their childhood afternoons frustratedly picking through Remy LeBeau’s obnoxiously-patoi’d speech balloons to get to the next part where Wolverine stabs a bunch of dudes with his claws. Wyatt’s departure leaves Tatum still attached to his suddenly rudderless passion project, along with Léa Seydoux as female lead Bella Donna Boudreaux.