Gone but not forgotten: Lizzy Caplan is opening up about that Gambit movie that never was, and her honest thoughts on it getting scrapped.

The project — which was reportedly to star Caplan and Channing Tatum and be a standalone film based on the X-Men character, Gambit — was going to be “a ’30s kind of screwball romantic comedy set in that world, which would have been really fun,” the Zero Day actress said in a new interview with Business Insider.

“It was a really cool idea,” Caplan said. “It’s kind of odd that it got scrapped. Those movies don’t seem to ever get scrapped, but it did.”

The Gambit film was ultimately axed when Disney and Fox merged in 2019. The Fatal Attraction star said she had officially signed on and had several meetings regarding the project when the film was killed. “We got down the road, we were gonna shoot it,” Caplan recalled. “I think there was a start date. I had had meetings with Channing, and…we had a director, then we didn’t, but I had multiple meetings with Channing and the other producers.”

She’s not harboring any ill will over the process, though. “Let’s just say that was, like, so many years ago,” she said. “The Gambit thing, that’s when those movies were, I guess, probably the best they were. That’s when they were dominating in every possible way. ”

For Caplan, it was probably all for the best in the end. “I had a lot of stress about doing that kind of movie even then,” she admitted. “So now I’m pretty okay not doing one of those movies. I can hear my manager screaming in the other room.”

Caplan may have made peace with the loss of the film, but her would-be costar, Tatum, has been very open about his disappointment, telling Variety in 2022 that he was left “traumatized” by the situation. “I shut off my Marvel machine,” he said at the time. “I haven’t been able to see any of the movies. I loved that character. It was just too sad. It was like losing a friend because I was so ready to play him.”

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Luckily, Tatum was still able to play Gambit; the character had a very memorable cameo in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, for which Tatum publicly thanked star Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy.

“I thought I had lost Gambit forever. But [Ryan Reynolds] fought for me and Gambit,” Tatum said in a post on X. “I will owe him probably forever. Cause I’m not sure how I could ever do something that would be equal to what this has meant to me. I love ya buddy.”

He continued, “[Levy] as well. Truly such a brilliant creator on every single level. All things happen for a reason. I’m so grateful to be in this movie. It’s a masterpiece in my opinion. And just pure bad ass joy. I was literally screaming in the theater. LFG!!”