Channing Tatum Says Rejecting Guillermo del Toro’s Unmade ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Remake Is ‘One of the Biggest Mistakes of My Career’

Channing Tatum was almost the star of a Guillermo del Toro fairy tale.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Tatum said he was offered the role of the Beast in del Toro’s retelling of “The Beauty and the Beast.” However, because the “Roofman” star “just had a baby” at the time and the film’s script wasn’t “totally there yet,” he turned the role down. Tatum looks back on the decision as “one of the biggest mistakes” of his career.

“One of the biggest mistakes of my career: Guillermo del Toro wanted to do ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ his version of the Beast,” Tatum recalled. “And I’d just had a baby, I was on a movie that was absolutely killing me, and the script wasn’t totally there yet. I was just in a place in my head that I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this right now.’ It was the biggest mistake, because I’m the biggest Guillermo fan ever. And I think Guillermo doing ‘Beauty and the Beast’ would’ve been the sickest movie ever.”

Tatum didn’t actually miss out on anything since the film was never made. He hopes eventually he’ll be able to right his wrong and work with the three-time Oscar winner.

“He’s got a billion other things that he wants to do,” Tatum added. “He’s such a creator. I’ll probably never forgive myself on that one, but I hope we get to work together one day.”

Del Toro is currently making the rounds with his latest fantasy epic “Frankenstein,” which invoked a ecstatic 13-minute standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival debut. The film stars Oscar Isaac as the titular mad scientist and Jacob Elordi as his grotesque creation.

While Venice was keen on del Toro’s latest, Variety film critic Peter Debruge was lukewarm. He wrote in his review, “ empathetic approach feels less revolutionary in ‘Frankenstein,’ since most versions of Shelley’s story feel for the brute, as opposed to his creator (played less like a scientist than a tortured artist by a long-haired Oscar Isaac). Boris Karloff embodied him as a tragic figure, crouched by the lake with the little girl, naive to the danger he poses for others. Now we get Jacob Elordi, looking like an emo jock or a wounded soldier, which is partly true, as he’s been reconstructed from the corpses of several.”