Time to get your dollars and baby oil ready, a third booty-shaking “Magic Mike” movie is officially happening. Director Steven Soderbergh and star Channing Tatum will reunite for what’s being titled “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” for Warner Bros. According to a social media post by Tatum, Reid Carolin, Tatum’s longtime producing and writing partner, has written the script, Soderbergh will direct what seems like the final installment and the movie will be made for HBO Max.
Soderbergh and Tatum have had a longstanding working relationship that has led to the duo making multiple projects together over the years, a personal favorite being the southern-fried heist flick “Logan Lucky.”
The “Magic Mike” films follow a group of male strippers pulling directly from Tatum’s own life experiences having a former career as an exotic dancer before making it big as an actor in Hollywood. They’ve been an interesting phenomenon as these films could have cheese or poorly made, but with Soderbergh or his producing partners like Gregory Jacobs at the helm (Jacobs directed the sequel, “Magic Mike XL,” the films have been critical and commercial hits, eventually becoming a bit of ritual for groups of women and men to make events out of the screenings.
Placing “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” on HBO Max is an exciting move as WarnerMedia continues to take various film projects that could do well at the box office and funnel them towards their streaming service instead, in the hopes of boosting subscribers. The streaming service is still far behind Netflix and Disney+ when it comes to growth.
The first two “Magic Mike” installments earned almost $300 million worldwide on budgets small enough that they likely turned an excellent profit. In 2017, they spawned a stage show called “Magic Mike Live” and in Las Vegas before expanding internationally to London, Berlin, and Australia. Tatum has definitely spent time overseeing them in his long extended hiatus from the screen (he hasn’t been seen in a live-action movie since 2017).
Now the question remains, who from the original cast will return to join Channing Tatum’s Mike Lane and what other Hollywood beefcakes will join the fold.