Hey guys! Horrorella here...
Looks like Steven Soderbergh just can't quit Channing Tatum. The director has managed to keep himself plenty busy since retiring last year, working on a series for Cinemax called THE KNICK and and Off-Broadway play called THE LIBRARY that will star Chloe Grace Moretz. He's definitely not bored.
But it looks like he can't stay away from a second helping of MAGIC MIKE. In a recent interview with GQ, star Channing Tatum revealed that Soderbergh will indeed be on board the sequel, though in a slightly (SLIGHTLY) reduced capacity. He will be handing over dirctorial duties to long-time producing partner and assistant director Gregory Jacobs, and will himself be serving as camera operator, director of photography and editor. States Soderbergh,
I want to be there, but I don't want to be the director. I want to be a part of it. I want to be in the band, but I just don't want to be the frontman this time.
So he seems to be taking the "anything but" approach. And I'm not complaining. It's great to see him handing the reigns over to someone else, but it's also good to know that the new film will still bear his fingerprints.
Additionally, Tatum, who is both starring in and co-writing the film alongside Reid Carolin, spilled some plot details about the sequel.
This new film is more of a road trip format, taking Mike out of the strip club and following him to a series of stripper conventions around the country. As with the last film, it will be based on experiences that Tatum himself had during his stint as an exotic dancer.
The women would come from miles and miles around,” he says, noting that there would be 3,000 screaming ladies watching him remove his clothes and gyrate. “Then you lock the doors and you say all bets are off. It gets zany and crazy, and it's a wild ride. It's an incubator for insanity. It doesn't matter almost what you do onstage. I don't want to put anything in black and white on a page, but if you've been to one, you know how crazy it gets, and now pour kerosene on that. You've seen ‘Magic Mike’ – now multiply that. Mob mentality. It's just exponentially crazier. I thought it was absolutely insane.
I love, LOVE that he used the word “zany” to describe a stripper convention. That fact makes me incredibly happy. But the set-up does actually sound insane, if not outright terrifying. 300 screaming women hitting a stripper-induced frenzy sounds like a dangerous place to be, let alone when you're the one on stage.
MAGIC MIKE XXL is set to hit theaters July 3, 2015.
