Channing Tatum Has One Big Regret About Magic Mike

Had everything gone according to corporate plan, "Magic Mike's Last Dance," the third installment in the male-stripper franchise created by director Steven Soderbergh and star Channing Tatum, would've gone straight to HBO Max. With Tatum's character arc complete, this creative team would've produced spinoff movies and/or series following other characters in this universe. The streaming service was dreaming of a brand. And Soderbergh, who had series experience via "K Street," "Unscripted," and "The Knick," seemed open to the idea of expanding the "Magic Mike" universe.

Behind the scenes, however, Soderbergh spied a way to "eventize" the third installment of "Magic Mike" as a buzzy theatrical release. As Tatum recently told Variety, he not only backed his director's impulse, but wished they would have been given a theatrical mandate from jump. "We would have made it less of a misshapen object," said Tatum. "We didn't have a traditional feel to it, and focused on the love story."

Tatum's frustration with the disappointing "Magic Mike's Last Dance" is understandable. I'm a huge fan of these movies, but the third movie felt strangely hollow. Tatum and Salma Hayek Pinault engaged in a wildly torrid love affair that explodes on the stage should've been a date movie must-see, but while they've definitely got a combustible chemistry, the film pulls up kinda flimsy. Why did Soderbergh and Tatum have to compromise after knocking out two insanely affordable hits?

"Magic Mike" grossed $167.2 million worldwide against a $7 million budget, while the delightful "Magic Mike XXL" piled up $118 million against a slightly inflated $15 million budget. The promise of seeing buff young studs doff their clothes was a major draw for those in the market for that kind of libidinous meat market. The visual razzle-dazzle was all muscles and bulges. So why relegate this strip club experience to people's living rooms?

As Soderbergh told Variety in 2022, before the theatrical release of the third movie, "It's certainly hard to argue that this isn't a movie that's best seen in a theater, because we have the data. People, primarily women, were going in packs, in large groups, to see the 'Magic Mike' movies."

Soderbergh and Tatum got the theatrical greenlight late in the production process — too late, it seems, to elevate the movie visually. Soderbergh had dreams of turning "Magic Mike's Last Dance" into a deeply personal musical extravaganza like Bob Fosse's masterpiece "All That Jazz," but the filmmaker's prolificacy and tendency toward chilliness likely thwarted this in pre-production. The madness of Fosse's masterpiece (wherein he eulogized himself many years ahead of his death) just isn't there.

Tatum is a true hoofer in the Gene Kelly mold, and Soderbergh has evinced the skill to make a marvellous musical. They can make the song-and-dance spectacle happen sans compromise. Hit up Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy at Warner Bros. (the duo that okayed the theatrical release of "Magic Mike's Last Dance," which they did not greenlight), cast the sucker up to the nines, and let 'er rip.