Exclusive: Doug Liman On Why He Left Channing Tatum’s Gambit

Doug Liman continues to be an in-demand director after hits like Edge of Tomorrow and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.  In November 2015, Liman was named as the director on Channing Tatum’s anticipated Gambit movie, then it was pushed back for him to do The Wall, a smaller film that’s coming out this Friday, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena. (Liman also reunited with Tom Cruise for American Made coming out in late September, as well.)

Last August, it was reported that LIman had walked away from Gambit to focus on other movies. It definitely seems like Liman is well-qualified to take on a superhero movie, and he might still do so, having attached himself to DC Entertainment/Warner Bros’ Dark Universe aka Justice League Dark around the same time as leaving Gambit.

When LRM spoke with Liman over the weekend, we asked him about his decision to leave Gambit for other projects:

“I’m all about the script, and I just wasn’t feeling it,” he told us. “I’ve gotta connect to the script. On Bourne Identity, Matt Damon was always referring to himself as a ‘script whore,’ and I’m with Matt on that. It’s like, you feel the script, that’s everything. We make movies because we want to tell great stories. The Wall started with a contest Amazon ran, and Dwain’s script rose to the top, and then it got handed to me.”

Look for more with Liman (and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) on The Wall later this week.