Outside of a cameo appearance in 2021’s Free Guy, Channing Tatum had been absent from the live-action acting scene since 2017, when he starred in Logan Lucky and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. 2022, however, saw him make his grand return on this front, not only starring in Dog and The Lost City, but also cameoed opposite Brad Pitt in Bullet Train. Looking ahead to 2023, we’ll first see Tatum in the new year reprising “Magic Mike” Lane in Magic Mike 3, a.k.a. Magic Mike’s Last Dance, and the actor has shared a steamy abs starring his abs… plus Salma Hayek.
As anyone who’s seen the first two Magic Mike movies knows, not showing off Channing Tatum’s well-sculpted abs in this latest entry would be downright criminal. After all, this is a film series about the world of male stripping, and while the picture that Tatum posted on Instagram doesn’t show his title character in performance mode, you can tell that Salma Hayek is relishing the experience of feeling the actor’s abs.
With a little under half a year to go until Magic Mike’s Last Dance comes out, plus the Magic Mike Live Tour having kicked off, Channing Tatum decided to share the first official image from the upcoming 2023 movie. While we don’t have any context for why Salma Hayek is touching Tatum’s abs in this scene (beyond the fact that they’re simply glorious), this looks to be a more intimate moment rather than if Hayek’s character was feeling him up at a strip club. So are these two romantically involved, or is Hayek’s character simply touching his abs for a definitely professional reason? Time will tell.
Originally the plan was for Westworld’s Thandiwe Newton to co-star alongside Channing Tatum in Magic Mike’s Last Dance, but she ended up departing the production and reportedly headed to a rehab facility. Soon after news about Newton’s exit came out, it was claimed that she’d been behaving “erratically” on the Magic Mike 3 set. In any case, Salma Hayek, who recently played Ajak in Eternals and Pina Auriemma in House of Gucci, was tapped as Newton’s replacement, though before we see her in Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Hayek will be heard as Kitty Softpaws in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
No plot details for Magic Mike’s Last Dance have been revealed yet, but Channing Tatum has described it as “the Super Bowl of stripper movies” and shared the we’ll see his character give “an intimate, straight-up one-on-one lap dance” for the first time. Steven Soderbergh, who helmed the first Magic Mike, resumed his directorial duties for this latest movie, and Magic Mike XXL director Gregory Jacobs is producing alongside Reid Carolin (who wrote the script), Nick Wechsler and Peter Kiernan.
After first being set up as an exclusive offering for HBO Max subscribers, Magic Mike’s Last Dance will now premiere in theaters on February 10, 2023. It will compete that opening weekend against Screen Gems and Thunder Road Films’ It’s All Coming Back to Me.
