While the development process has seen several setbacks, with both The Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt and his replacement, filmmaker Doug Liman, having to pull out due to scheduling conflicts, Tatum has now insisted that plans for the film are still underway.

When promoting Kingsman: The Golden Circle at 2017 Comic-Con International in San Diego on Thursday (20Jul17), the star was asked by comicbook.com if he was still playing Gambit, to which he replied, "Yeah, of course. We're working on it right now."

Even though the project doesn't currently have a director, producer Simon Kinberg stated in February (17) that the film was still being developed and that the shoot was slated to kick off in early 2018.

And while Gambit has had a bumpy road so far, Tatum further explained at Comic-Con that all the issues that have cropped up may, in fact, be "giant blessings" in the long run.

"Because we were making it, (and) we're writing a movie right at the turn of a paradigm shift in movies," he said. "So we got lucky that we didn't just come out with ours, which I don't think was fully formed. It was a good idea. We were going in the right direction. And then we got to learn from two really beautifully different kinds of a complete paradigm shifts... like Logan and Deadpool, I mean, they knocked down a lot of doors for us to be able to do things that we wanted to do in the first place."