MAGIC MIKE released recently, and has been doing pretty well for itself overall. Our own JimmO liked it well enough, and it managed to make $39.7 million in its first weekend and $72.7 million by the end of its tenth day in theaters. Not bad at all for any movie really, let alone a modestly-budgeted mid-summer movie about the Channing Tatum’s past misadventures in the wild world of male strippers.
Which means that for the fans out there (of which it seems there are a fair few), a sequel certainly couldn’t hurt. And that’s just what Tatum has in mind – when asked in a Twitter interview by Glamour Magazine if we’ll see a sequel, Tatum replied “Yes, yes and yes! We’re working on the concept now. We want to flip the script and make it bigger.”
So there you have it. They’re making it bigger. Is that a result of expanding the gender of client they strip for in the sequel? Guess we’ll find out soon enough, though the lingering question is of course that of how Stephen Soderbergh can be replaced (considering his repeated statements about retiring after just a few more films). His style and skill was a large part of what made this thing work, so it’s going to take a lot wrangling and a little luck (or maybe it’s the other way around) to find someone able to fill his shoes. As JimmyO said, “In the end, Soderbergh makes MAGIC MIKE work better than you’d ever expect.” So who would you pick to fill his shoes?