‘Magic Mike’ Aims To Be A Broadway Musical, Produced By Channing Tatum

Matthew McConaughey and Channing Tatum Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer January 25, 2019

“Magic Mike” is getting down off the pole and heading over to the great white way.

The story of a man trying to leave stripping for a quiet life of carpentry and monogamy, which earned whoops and hollers at the box office in 2012, has been stripped down to a stage musical. The show will premiere in Boston this Fall, with an eye on a Broadway run with Channing Tatum, the likable and bankable star of the original film heading up the team of producers.

Between “Mean Girls,” “Pretty Woman” and “Clueless,” the trend of big budget nostalgia-driven film-to-stage musicals is clearly in full swing, though none of those musicals have reached major success from critics or sales. But with “Mike” getting ready to let it all hang out, don’t be surprised to see ratings for the 2020 Tony Awards skyrocket. “Magic Mike” has the distinction of having dance implicit in its story, and, ironically, of having a script that’s not so iconic that hearing the lines recited will feel forced.

Besides the uber-talented Tatum (a former stripper himself, and the inspiration for the “Magic Mike” movie), the musical’s team of creators is dynamic: the Pulitzer prize-winning nice Jewish boy Tom Kitt and nice non-Jewish boy Brian Yorkey wrote the score, and Broadway hotshot Trip Cullman will direct.

There’s just one thing that could sink the X-rated new musical’s chance to wet theater audiences’ whistles: there are zero women on the team. And unless your team is made up of male strippers, collaborative creative projects that don’t bother to recruit representatives from fifty-percent of the population seldom succeed.

Take it from Channing himself, who showed us in his most Jewish-ever dance sequence (it’s from the Coen Brothers movie “Hail, Cesar!”) how wrong things can go when you have “No Dames”:

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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