The new Magic Mike movie is moving forward without Matthew McConaughey as strip-club owner Dallas, according to the film’s director.
Magic Mike XXL is expected to star Channing Tatum in the title role, with co-stars Matt Bomer, Alex Pettyfer and Joe Manganiello also returning. However, new director Greg Jacobs confirmed McConaughey would not be involved in an interview with Indiewire.
“It’s a road trip movie and put it this way, it’s different enough that once you see it you’ll understand why we made a sequel,” he said. “No one will be accusing us of making the same movie twice.”
Separate reports suggest Andie MacDowell and Jada Pinkett Smith are likely to join the cast, however. Variety says MacDowell has signed on for an unspecified role, while Deadline suggests Pinkett Smith is in talks to play the owner of a strip club.
Tatum, whose teenage experiences as a male stripper in Florida inspired the original Magic Mike film in 2012, has previously said the follow-up will take place at a strippers’ convention, a mass staged event featuring hundreds of men.
“The women would come from miles and miles around,” he said in May. “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 on stage. 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.”
Soderbergh is returning for the sequel as cinematographer, camera operator, and editor after highlighting his preference for small screen ventures in a series of recent interviews. “I want to be there, but I don’t want to be the director,” he told GQ earlier this year. “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.”
