Doug Liman to direct psychological thriller “The Wall” for Amazon

PanARMENIAN.Net - It looks like fans of X-Men character Gambit are going to have to wait a little bit longer to see Channing Tatum don the trademark trenchcoat for Fox’s big-screen take on the Marvel mutant, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Gambit was to have begun production in the first quarter of this year but rewrites have pushed the start of the movie project until the end of 2016, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. Reid Carolin, Tatum’s producing partner, who wrote Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL, is handling those chores.

The keyboarding has now freed up director Doug Liman to tackle another project: The Wall, a psychological thriller set up at Amazon Studios. Liman is in negotiations to direct it.

The Wall was Amazon’s first spec script purchase and appeared high on the 2014 Black List.

The screenplay, written by Dwain Worrell, tells of a sniper and his spotter who are pinned down behind cover by a legendary sniper.

(Fun backstory on Worrell: He wrote the script while teaching English in China. He had no Hollywood connections and little quality Internet while there but a friend told him that Amazon was accepting open script submissions for its fledgling original content division. It ended up being the first movie script Amazon bought.)

The Wall is described as small-scale in nature, and Liman plans on knocking it out with a late spring/early summer shoot before returning to pre-production on Gambit.

Liman came on board Gambit in November 2015, after the departure of Rupert Wyatt. Tatum has remained attached throughout. Lea Seydoux, who played a Bond girl in Spectre, was to have been the female lead when Wyatt was the helmer but her present involvement is less clear.