Lead star and producer Channing Tatum confirmed to Entertainment Tonight that the third “Magic Mike” film will leave nothing to the imagination. “You’ve seen me dance onstage, but you’ve never seen me give an intimate, straight-up one-on-one lap dance,” Tatum teased. “That’s definitely going to be in the third one.” Directed by Steven Soderbergh, “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” marks Tatum’s farewell to his stripper persona fans first encountered onscreen in 2012. Since then, the franchise spurred star-studded sequel “Magic Mike XXL” and a touring act, “Magic Mike Live.” Tatum assured audiences that the live show’s famous “water dance” will be given a special ode in “Last Dance.” “I have a pretty crazy dance that opens the movie,” Tatum explained. “We kick it off on a pretty strong level and then at the end, I might do a version of the water dance in the show. There’s a splash zone in the movie, so it’s a for real thing.”
Tatum called the “Magic Mike Live” act “medicine for the soul” with good vibes only. “We do extensive interviews with these guys to get to know them. What’s their relationship with their mom like? Do they really, actually respect women? Because I think that is what our show is, just completely different,” Tatum added. “We’ve done, I think, just a really special job curating the people that are creating the show.” “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” will be a “pretty bonkers” gender-swapped take on a ’90s classic rom-com, as Tatum previously stated. “We’re kind of swinging for the fences — there never needs to be another stripper movie after this one,” Tatum told The New York Times. “We’re trying to do a fish-out-of-water story where it’s a reverse-role ‘Pretty Woman’ story that ends up with a lot of dancing in it.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. The origin of the third film can be charted back to director Soderbergh, who convinced Tatum to go for one “Last Dance” as Magic Mike. “In my opinion, we had chewed up all the meat on the bone, story-wise,” Tatum told IndieWire. “We didn’t plan on making a second one. Then all of our ancillary characters were so good and fun that we felt like, ‘Let’s do another movie and give those characters more real estate that we didn’t have before.’ Once we did that, we felt like there was no other story. Let’s just like get out of jail.”
