Channing Tatum talks ‘Magic Mike’ musical: ‘I’m a huge fan of stage’

June 29, 2012 | Filed under: Movies | Posted by:

Article originally appeared on EW written by 

Save up those $1 bills: Magic Mike star (and inspiration) Channing Tatum, director Steven Soderbergh, and writer Reid Carolin are turning their stripper movie into a live stage show. The trio discussed the idea while working on Magic Mike’s script, but Tatum says he began taking it seriously thanks to his costar. “Matt Bomer started singing some of the songs while he was onstage, and he was like, ‘This would kill as a musical,’” recalls Tatum. “That cemented it for me.”

The team hasn’t decided if the show will include singing, but it will likely use characters from the movie and take place in a strip club. “We want to do something interactive…so it becomes like Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding,” Soderbergh says.

And according to Carolin, “The musical will be about walking into the club and surrendering yourself to that world for a night. We want it to be a place where women can scream at the dancers and throw money.”

So, would Tatum consider reprising his on-screen role? “I’d love the challenge. I’m a huge fan of stage. But if it’s a musical, I’d need a lot of singing classes,” says the star, laughing. “I think there’s probably people who are better at it than I am.”

Magic Mike isn’t the only Broadway show Soderbergh has in the works. The director is also planning a theatrical version of his long-gestating Cleopatra rock musical Cleo, which at one point was rumored to be in development as a 3-D movie epic starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. ”I was going to do [Cleo] as a movie, but now I want to do it on stage,” says Soderbergh, who just finished his upcoming thriller Bitter Pill and is prepping to shoot the Michael Douglas-Matt Damon HBO movie Liberace — all while insisting that he still intends to make good on his previously announced retirement plans.