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Thursday, July 12, 2012
 Magic Mike 2 Is Happening, So We'd Better Help Channing Tatum With Some Ideas
By Amos Barshad

 Just yesterday, Grantland’s Summermetrician Zach Baron and Oscarmetrician Mark Harris had the following exchange:

Baron: When last we heard from you, The Artist had just triumphed in one of the most self-congratulatory and uninspiring Oscar races ever ... and you had finally finished getting the last bits of black and white inked into your Undying Magic of Old Hollywood Cinema full back tattoo.

Harris: As you know, it's been a long and painful process trying to have that back tattoo removed. But the producers of the direct-to-DVD Magic Mike 2 have informed me that if I am to take over Matthew McConaughey's role, it has to go.


And as Mark Harris jokes, so it shall be! Channing Tatum has confirmed, via the eternally glorious forum of a Glamour U.K. Twitter interview, that "Yes, yes, and yes!," a Magic Mike sequel really is in the works — "We're working on the concept now. We want to flip the script and make it bigger."

Flip the script? Make it bigger? What could Chan possibly mean? Seeing as we here at Grantland are nothing if not into coming up with fake movie plots tangentially related to Magic Mike, we thought we'd throw out some possibilities for Magic Mike 2. Feel free to chime in with plot pitches of your own!

Option 1


As MTV points out, Tatum has said that he, himself, is done stripping forever: “This will be my swan song. I will never do or talk anything about stripping after this ever, ever again.” Or so he thinks. In Magic Mike: Strip 2 Live, Mike has settled down into a life as a custom-furniture maker with glowing new bride Cody Horn and their beautiful baby boy. It looks like “happily ever after” has finally arrived — until it turns out Mike’s baby boy has an enlarged heart, just like Denzel’s kid in John Q. Of course, the furniture-making game ain't the thong-popping game, and uninsured (nobody tell Obamacare!*) Mike is not exactly flush with cash. But there's hope! Matthew McConaughey's new Miami club is hosting the International Stripping Olympics, a winner-take-all strip-off for [however much money it costs to fix an enlarged heart]. And wouldn't you know? The heavy favorite is Miami's biggest superstar, The Kid, the sallow-blank-turned-buffed-up-and-coked-out dancing machine. Yeah, Mike promised Cody Horn he'd never dance again. But to save his family, Mike is going to have to get Magical — one ... last ... time. (*Sorry, I don’t understand real things, does that make any sense?)

Option 2


When Hollywood.com asked Joe Manganiello about a sequel, Big Dick Richie explained that "We're actually talking about the possibility of doing the prequel. Because if you do the sequel, then you lose Mike. Otherwise, what's Mike going to do? He’s going to come back for one big heist ... so, you would do the prequel — how they got there." In Magic Mike: The Early Years, we meet the cast of Xquisite as 13-year-olds, running around the sun-soaked Tampa streets, fumbling toward adolescence, falling in love, drinking Boone’s Farm under highway overpasses. How did Mike, Tarzan, Ken, Tito, and Richie (or, as he was known at the time, Medium Dick Richie) become the kind of boys who became the kind of men who take their clothes off for money? It all started that summer, when everyone still hung out in the clearing in the woods behind St. Anthony's Church ... Also, since we probably won't have enough money to get the Benjamin Button/Winklevii technology needed to put Tatum and crew's faces on children's bodies, the cast will have to play their younger selves by doing that thing where you kneel down and put your shoes in front of your knees.

Option 3


Get ALL OF THE DUDES to take off their clothes. Pulling Tatum, McConaughey, and Manganiello to get naked was no shabby start. But in Magic Mike: All of the Dudes, we are actually talking all of the dudes, prancing and preening and showing butt: Ryan Gosling! Jon Hamm! George Clooney! Andrew Garfield! Kevin Hart! Alan Alda! Roger Federer! Prince! Bartolo Colon! Bill Murray! The guy who played Rufio! The guy from Man vs. Food! The guy who invented Super Glue! All of the dudes!