'Magic Mike's Last Dance': Steven Soderbergh's Upcoming Movie Ends With A 30-Minute Dance Sequence

In September, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” would get a theatrical release instead of one on HBO Max. And Steven Soderbergh fans couldn’t be happier about the news. It’s Soderbergh’s first movie in a theater since 2018’s “Unsane,” and it caps off a trilogy that boasts pretty wild in-person screening experiences.  

READ MORE: ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ Trailer: Channing Tatum & Steven Soderbergh Return One Last Time To The World Of Exotic Dancing

And Soderbergh wants to go Channing Tatum‘s “Magic Mike” Lane to get the biggest, most sensational send-off. How’s he managing that? How about ending “Last Dance” with a 30-minute dance sequence? “We wanted to blow the dancing up in a big way,” the director told Empire in a new interview. “We have this dance number with Channing and Salma [Hayek] right up front. And then the last 30-plus minutes of the movie are just this giant dance sequence.” In the upcoming film, Tatum’s Mike travels with Hayek’s Max to develop a musical based on his stripteasing exploits at a revered South London theater. As one can imagine, it ends up quite the seductive dance between the two.

But Soderbergh wanted to do something really special to end the “Magic Mike” trilogy. “My job is, how do I make each one of these distinct? I can’t shoot them all the same way, I have to come up with a different approach for each dance,” explained Soderbergh. “And that was really the challenge.” Thankfully, a theatre backdrop gave Soderbergh plenty of ideas to spice things up. “We’re staging all the sequences in this lovely old theatre, the Clapham Grand,” the director continued. “That was fun, there’s not a bad angle to be had in that place…”

Magic Mike XXL” saw the world of 2012’s “Magic Mike” get bigger, bolder, and more elaborate. And while Soderbergh only served as editor and cinematographer on the 2015 film, he wants “Last Dance” to feel like a completion of what the first two movies started. “The first film was a fairly straightforward rendering of a set of characters who exist in a certain milieu that hasn’t changed since its inception,” Soderbergh explained. “And the second film was pushing out a little bit to talk about what women are looking for on a night out in which fantasies and sexuality are explored – and how do you retain a sense of mystery, while still existing in an environment in which things like permission and consent are front and centre?” So, naturally, Soderbergh sees his third film as a larger celebration of that evolving dynamic.

“The third film just really dives into this in a much bigger way, partially because for the first time we see Mike in a relationship,” Soderbergh said on the masculine-feminine push-pull of “Last Dance.” “So that just allows for a dynamic and a set of discussions that we haven’t had access to, prior to “Magic Mike’s Last Dance.”” And audiences will be more than happy to have those discussions in the theater instead of streaming the film at home. “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” hits theaters everywhere on February 10, 2023, just in time for Valentine’s Day.