The Film: Although you think there's an obvious single audience for a film where the likes of Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey take off their clothes and dance, Magic Mike was bigger than just a female-fantasy movie. With Steven Soderbergh gaining praise for putting a story to compliment the naked men into his film, the movie played wider than expected and scooped a $167 million box office gross from a tiny $7 million budget. A sequel was obviously on the way, with Soderbergh's frequent collaborator Gregory Jacobs taking over from the retired director. Although McConaughey has left for bigger things, expect much more of Tatum's abs. The Title: The classic way of hiding a sequel is to simply extend the original title with a little contextual wink to the audience. And that's what going on here; in a gender reversal of what happened with Piranha 3DD (which is available on DVD in 2D, making the title rather defunct), Magic Mike 2 will be called Magic Mike XXL. You probably groaned at the joke the first time and it'll only get worse as time goes by; once it's plastered on buses and internet ads it'll become irritating, the one-note nature of the XXL increasingly obvious. It's a pun, not a film title. They've also shot themselves in the foot a little, if the plan is to fully franchise the male strippers; will a third film be called the decidedly unsexy Magic Mike XXXL?
