I see a lot of people placing Gambit on their most anticipated releases of 2016, the only problem is that it’s January, the casting isn’t done and cameras aren’t rolling. It’s now safe to say Fox will eventually announce the release date is being pushed back to sometime in 2017. In the fall, there had been a window the film could have made the October 2016 release date, but frankly they missed it and the release will be pushed to 2017.
Here’s why that is.
There’s a huge turnaround set aside for post-production on a film, and that includes a lot of time of prep work placed into pre-production too. The the prep includes casting the film, costume design and fittings, concept artwork, set design/construction, framing the shots, storyboarding and pre-visuals. We only just learned a couple months ago that Doug Liman had finally replaced Rupert Wyatt, it’s unlikely Wyatt left the film in tip-top-shape before exiting, so there’s a bunch of major things still left to do before even cameras start rolling. When a new director comes in they’d obviously be making their own creative changes to the project, and even more so with Liman’s brand of style/look to his films.
There’s also only two actors cast for the project, which should sound-off alarms to anyone thinking it’s ready to start shooting, or has already started. Even if the rest of the actors get cast you still have to do table reads and give the actors some time to learn their lines, developing their characters.
Another issue being that Wolverine 3 is expected to be the next X-Men film that goes into production and said to be shooting early this year (as previously confirmed by director James Mangold), considering how Fox has worked with these films it’s doubtful that we’ll be seeing Gambit shooting at the same time as Wolverine 3. Hugh Jackman’s final performance as Wolverine is slightly a bigger priority at the moment, and it’s said the script is in really good place to get Hugh’s approval to start production very soon.
Wolverine 3 like Gambit hasn’t started shooting, and it’s being released in March 2017. This sort of gives us even more reasoning to think that Fox just hasn’t figured out a new date for it, hence why they haven’t made the announcement.
This information gives the impression production won’t even start taking place until the summer or fall, making it increasing difficult and let’s be honest, impossible to make an October 2016 release date. Even if it started shooting now, it would still have to be pushed back to 2017 because of how post-production works as well. Six months from end of shooting to release has never happened on a film of this scale, it’s not going to be done here either.
The post would include digital effects, sound editing/correction, score, and overall editing, this takes up a majority of the production’s time. And as we well know also during the editing process leads to potential reshoots and pick-ups, something that has become common place with these bigger films. I find it hard to believe that Doug would have agreed to a rushed production, considering how desperate Fox was to even land a director in the first place, not mention a replacement for Wyatt.
Here’s a little perspective, Doctor Strange started shooting this fall around the same time as Gambit was expected to. They’ll be able to make their November release date, because that fall shoot has given them enough time (still isn’t a lot) to work through post.
A combination of time and logic is the reason why Gambit won’t be ready for 2016, sorry folks.
