UPDATED!! Gambit No More!!!

UPDATE: So I talked to SK, my inside man at X3, and I can confirm that Gambit is indeed absent from the film. In fact, I don't think he ever really made it past that first 6-day draft of the script. Also, I'm told that Shawn Ashmore is a good foot taller than Ellen Page, the new Kitty Pryde, thus making her look even more like a 12 year old than she already does and making their scenes together more than a little silly looking. Sigh...

Hey guys, it's Donnie...I'm gonna make this short and not-so-sweet.

TheXVerse.com is reporting that producer Ralph Winter has confirmed to them that the planned appearance by Gambit in X3 has, in fact, been scrubbed. I'm a little wary of the source, (both Ralph Winter, who I've never heard of before today, and TheXVerse, as no one else seems to have the story yet) but logically this news makes sense to me in a way. They've added about 8 new characters in this flick, (including, perhaps, Bishop as well?) and from what I've heard, Gambit wasn't going to make much more than a cameo in this outing, so if I was planning on making more X-films, I'd wanna save Gambit for later and really be able to flesh him out into a full blown character.

Then again, speculation continues on whether or not this will be the last real X-Men movie. Yes, we've got a Wolverine spin-off movie and Magneto spin-off movie in the works, and apparantly Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg have a multi-picture deal with Fox that may or may not involve an X-Men spinoff with a number of other characters from the X-Men universe. But it's all very amorphic right now. Either way, at this point I think I'll be more surprised if Gambit is actually in the movie than if he isn't.