Despite appearances, I am slowly coming to realize that Channing Tatum is something of an anomaly. While I’ve admittedly found him rather bland as an actor (probably due to a few lackluster choices like Dear John), the man does give good interview and seems to have a good attitude about the fact that people are rather unkind towards him. After all, he can manage to joke about his rumored missing chromosome (“I don’t know, could be true”) and talk at length about the painful memory of that time his penis almost got burned off. Also, he very deftly handles questions about his (NSFW) year as stripper Chan Crawford, which has to be just a little bit embarrassing. Now, just as Tatum’s preparing to appear in 21 Jump Street movie reboot, news comes down the pike that Tatum will be re-living his stripper days in a Steven Soderbergh movie:

First off, Steven Soderbergh does still plan to step away from directing with more or less the same timeline, however he’s a workhorse and seeing another interesting project cross his desk–luckily for us–he’s decided to squeeze in one more picture onto his schedule.

The director plans to team with Channing Tatum, who stars in Soderbergh’s forthcoming “Haywire,” on the actor’s passion project “Magic Mike.” The film is one Tatum has been talking about making for a while now, as it’s an autobiographical tale about his young days as a stripper. Way back in early 2010, Tatum talked about the project and at the time had another helmer in mind saying, “I’ve already got the director picked out. I’d like Nicolas Refn, who did the movie ‘Bronson,’ to do it because he’s insane for it. It needs to be a crazy film and I think it’s also possible to do a cute, romantic movie.” Obviously, in the time that has since passed, Tatum hooked up with Soderbergh and the two seem to have hit it off smashingly.

The story will find Tatum playing the titular character, who teaches a younger dancer how to hustle his wares on stage and off, and it’s inspired by the actor’s own experiences. “This was a wild and pivotal time in my life and I couldn’t be more thrilled to go down the rabbit hole with Steven,” Tatum said in a statement obtained by Deadline.

“When Channing talked to me about this, I thought it was one of the best ideas I’d ever heard for a movie,” Soderbergh said in a statement. “I said I wanted in immediately. It’s sexy, funny and shocking. We’re using ‘Saturday Night Fever’ as our model, so hopefully we’re on the right track.”

We’ve been told that the film will be a low budget affair, not quite as lean as the production of “The Girlfriend Exprience,” but likely coming in with a $6-7 million pricetag. The script will be penned by Reid Carolin who will also produce alongside Nick Wechsler, Gregory Jacobs and Tatum. “Magic Mike” will be taken to buyers next month at Cannes for foreign pre-sales where as part of the presentation a teaser cut by Soderbergh will be shown featuring Tatum. And lensing on this will begin very soon with a September/October shoot in the works.

[From The Playlist]

LMAO. Are they totally serious about using Saturday Night Fever as a template? This could be a complete disaster in the making, and considering how Soderberg made The Girlfriend Experience a boring movie despite the fact that it starred porn star Sasha Grey, well, I don’t have really high hopes for a great film here. Still, Tatum really has the stripper moves, and I find it quite interesting that Tatum can turn on the charm for interviews and on the red carpet, but he’s a real wet blanket (see below) when getting papped. He should, you know, dance for the cameras at all times like he did as Chan Crawford. Here’s that NSFW video again, by the way. Nice socks!

Photos courtesy of Fame Pictures