Though he’s been happy to confirm for a while that he’s working on a sequel to hit stripper pic Magic Mike, currently called Magic Mike XXL, Channing Tatum has largely stayed quiet about the plot. All that has changed, however, and from the sounds of it, the new movie will live up to that size-does-matter title, though not quite in the way you might imagine.
Talking to GQ, Tatum said that the new story will see Mike and some of the others heading out on a road trip tour of stripper conventions, with the ideas drawn once again from Tatum’s own experiences.
“The women would come from miles and miles around,” Tatum said, describing the atmosphere generated by 3,000 screaming ladies. “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.”
If you were at all disappointed that Steven Soderbergh won’t be directing this one, handing over the big chair to protégé Greg Jacobs, you’ll be happy to learn he’s still planning to be very much involved. Soderbergh will, in fact, act as camera operator, cinematographer and editor.
“I want to be there, but I don't want to be the director,” Soderbergh tells the magazine. “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.”
Shooting – with a definite Soderbergh feel, then – on **Magic Mike XXL **should start later this year.