MAGIC MIKE was definitely one of the surprises of the summer. Grossing over $150 million worldwide, it was not long before the discussion of a potential sequel began to spread. Seeing as the film was inspired by star Channing Tatum’s real life experiences as a stripper, it seemed natural that he would be the one writing the follow up. But, now there are rumors swirling that he may direct the sequel as well.
Tatum has said that he has a couple of projects coming up and then wants to try his hand at directing as well. When asked about directing the follow up to the Steven Soderbergh film, Tatum said “We’ve thought about directing Magic Mike 2, and we’re still thinking about it, and we want to do that. We want to do the sequel. It’s too good of a movie, and the characters are so crazy, that we want to go for it. We feel like we did the little indie version this last time, and for the next one, we want to up the stakes a little, maybe go even farther.”
Tatum also said he would like to follow in the steps of Ben Affleck, a successful actor and writer who then became a success behind the camera. Tatum seems confident that Soderbergh is really retired now and will not come back for MAGIC MIKE 2. “I could look at how he uses the camera, how he sets up shots, how he makes his decisions, but at the end of the day, it’s really how he sees the world, and we’ll never be able to copy Soderbergh. No one can. Even if you tried to copy him, you can’t, because it’s always going to be a reflection of yourself. It’s like love. If you understand love, if you’re in love, you’ll put your version of love into the movie.”
My wife begrudgingly saw MAGIC MIKE and was pleasantly surprised to find it was actually a good movie. I think a lot of people were turned off by the trailer and didn’t give it a chance. For those of you who have seen it, I am not sure how a sequel would work or if they would go the prequel route as suggested by Tatum and Joe Manganiello.