Our wait for details on the Magic Mike sequel set to hit theaters in July 2015 is over, ladies and (gay) gentlemen.
Thanks to GQ's July 2014 cover story on Channing Tatum (read it here in its entirety) we now know the plot will revolve around our favorite male exotic dancers going to a strippers' convention. According to GQ, that's the first memory of his stripper days Tatum shared with his producing partner Reid Carolin when pitching the first film: "I want to do the story of when I'm in a dark U-Haul with a bunch of these guys and we're doing drugs driving up to the stripper convention."
Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh told them the idea wasn't a scene in the movie -- it was a movie in itself. So the sequel will now be inspired by two conventions Tatum attended when he was 19. "The women would come from miles and miles around," Tatum says, recalling one audience numbering 3,000. "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."
The article also reveals that while Soderbergh's producing partner Greg Jacobs will direct the "on-the-road adventure," the retired director will still be the director of photography and camera operator, as well as the film editor. "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," Soderbergh says.