Channing Tatum Magic Mike 2 Director?

Channing Tatum in a rare non-shirtless moment in Magic Mike.

Channing Tatum to direct Magic Mike 2?

Channing Tatum, whose White House Down opens this evening in North America, may co-direct the sequel to his 2012 sleeper domestic hit Magic Mike. Unlike the original film, directed by Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh (Traffic) and loosely based on Tatum’s own experiences as a stripper, the star of The Vow and 21 Jump Street told The Hollywood Reporter that the aptly titled (at least for now) Magic Mike 2 “will be a road-trip movie, and it will essentially be the movie that everyone thought the first one was going to be: crazy and fun and less slice-of-life and less drama. The first one, we had to make not so cheesy and campy; this one we are going to swing for the fences.”

Channing Tatum adds that either he and producing partner Reid Carolin will co-direct the fence-swinging Magic Mike 2, or the job will go to frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator Greg Jacobs, one of the producers of the original Magic Mike.

Steven Soderbergh: ‘Magic Mike 2’ cinematographer?

Curiously, although Steven Soderbergh has officially retired from directing movies, he apparently is still willing to work in some other capacity on a film set. In his THR interview, Channing Tatum explains that Soderbergh “said he would shoot it; he would DP it” – i.e., he’d be the Magic Mike 2 cinematographer.

“And there’s another thing: Is that good?” Channing continues. “Because he is such an opinionated and talented man, if he wants to do a five-minute tracking shot through a forest, you don’t want to doubt him. It would be like having sex with your girlfriend while her porn-star ex-boyfriend is in the room watching you.”

Channing Tatum & ‘hero’ Genghis Khan

Now, much more interesting than anything about Magic Mike 2 is Channing Tatum’s interest in Genghis Khan, one of his “heroes.”

Sergey Bodrov, whose Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan was (somewhat strangely) nominated for the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, gave Tatum a book on the Central Asian conqueror whose hordes spread terror in much of central Asia and eastern Europe in the early 13th century.

Bodrov and Tatum, in fact, met to discuss Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan, apparently as a possible vehicle for the American actor as “at that time, he hadn’t decided he was going to use an Asian actor because Genghis Khan is rumored to have had freckles and green eyes and red hair because he was more from northern Mongolia. Back in the day, the Mongolians didn’t have the dark features they have today.” Be that as it may, Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano ended up playing Temudjin – later known as Genghis Khan.

But would Channing Tatum have been believable as Genghis Khan? Well, if Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance, and Gerard Butler can play Attila the Hun, why not Channing Tatum as an all-American central Asian conqueror? And let’s not forget that in Henry Levin’s Genghis Khan (1966), the title role went to an Egyptian: Omar Sharif.

According to the IMDb, another Genghis Khan is in the works, to come out in 2014. RZA is to be the film’s director, from a screenplay by John Milius, whose credits range from the revered Apocalypse Now to the reviled Red Dawn (1984).

Now, is Channing Tatum’s agent aware of the upcoming Genghis Khan movie?

‘Magic Mike’ cast

Besides Channing Tatum, the original Magic Mike cast includes Alex Pettyfer, Matt Bomer.

Plus Olivia Munn, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Manganiello, James Martin Kelly, Cody Horn, Avery Camp, Adam Rodriguez, Kevin Nash, and Gabriel Iglesias.

Channing Tatum in a rare non-shirtless moment in Magic Mike photo: Warner Bros.

Jesper Ganslandt.

Robert Pattinson ‘Mission: Blacklist’ gets new director: Jesper Ganslandt

Production on Mission: Blacklist, to star Robert Pattinson, seemed to have stalled for a while. Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire quietly dropped out a couple of months ago, but now Deadline.com (“exclusively”) heralds that Jesper Ganslandt “has been tapped” to take the helm of the project about U.S. military interrogator Eric Maddox, whose work is credited for the eventual capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. (Note: This bit of “exclusive” news about Robert Pattinson’s eagerly anticipated project has been floating around the Internet since late June.)

Jesper Ganslandt’s previous narrative-feature credits, all in his native Sweden, are the family drama Blondie (2012), the psychological thriller The Ape (2009), and the coming-of-age drama Falkenberg Farewell (2006). This last title, a somewhat overlong but ultimately quite moving story, was Sweden’s submission for that year’s Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.

‘Mission: Blacklist’ filming date

Deadline adds that production on Mission: Blacklist is scheduled for fall 2013. If true, Robert Pattinson will be hopping from project to project. Also reportedly scheduled to begin production in the near future is Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert, to feature Pattinson, Naomi Watts, and possibly James Franco, while David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, in which Pattinson is featured opposite John Cusack and Julianne Moore, officially started filming a couple of days ago.

And let’s not forget David Michôd’s The Rover, filmed in Australia earlier this year. With luck, The Rover, in which Pattinson finds himself at odds with Guy Pearce, may get either a Toronto Film Festival or a Venice Film Festival screening. And with more luck, American distributor A24 will have the dystopian thriller ready for next awards season, though some reports assert The Rover will gets its U.S. release only in 2014.

Update: According to the California Film Commission, Mission: Blacklist is one of several film and television productions approved for the state’s Tax Incentive Program in late June / early July 2013. This bit of information comes via missionblacklist-film.com, which posted a graph featuring the Mission: Blacklist initial shooting date as September 30, 2013. In order to receive the tax grants, Mission: Blacklist must either film 75 percent of its production days or spend 75 percent of its production budget in California. Also: “Once an application is approved,” states the California Film Commission’s website, “principal photography must begin within 180 days.”

So, if Queen of the Desert takes off later this year, that means Robert Pattinson will have been featured in four productions during the course of 2013.

Robert Pattinson toplines Mission: Blacklist cast

Based on Eric Maddox and Davin Seay’s book Mission: Black List #1 – The Inside Story of the Search for Saddam Hussein – As Told by the Soldier Who Masterminded His Capture, the Mission: Blacklist screenplay is credited to Erik Jendressen (Band of Brothers), Dylan Kussman (X2, Leatherheads) and Trace Sheehan (Grace & Mercy / The Bounceback).

According to Deadline, Jendressen, Kevin Waller, and Preferred Content’s Ross M. Dinerstein are the film’s producers via Code Entertainment, which is financing the project. Embankment Films, which is Mission: Blacklist‘s sales representative, lists Waller, Dinerstein, Al Corley, and Bart Rosenblatt as the film’s producers.

Both Embankments Films and the IMDb list only Robert Pattinson in the Mission: Blacklist cast. Pattinson, obviously, will play Eric Maddox.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier poster.

‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ poster: New teaser poster reveals Captain America’s red-stained shield

A teaser poster for Captain America: The Winter Soldier began circulating online a couple of days ago. Now, what does the poster (see above) have to say about the movie? Well, absolutely nothing. After all, it’s only a teaser poster, and everybody already knows that Captain America, in the person of Chris Evans, parades around with a red-white-and-blue shield – though, admittedly, there isn’t much red left in the shield above. In fact, the little that remains makes the shield look as if it’s all bloodstained and in dire need of some expert polishing.

Needless to say, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a sequel to The Avengers, and, indirectly, to Captain America: The First Avenger. The Captain a.k.a. Steve Rogers has been transported from the World War II era to the early 21st century, and he’s still struggling to learn how to navigate the Internet and to understand the concept of global warming and reality TV shows. Other things, however, remain unchanged, i.e., war, famine, epidemics, natural disasters, and all that good stuff. So, whenever the Captain feels nostalgic, all he needs to do is read a newspaper or watch the news on TV (that is, if he can get the remote to work). Else, he can watch a DVD of Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were.

Also for old times’ sake, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Captain will come face to face with his old friend Bucky Barnes (played by Sebastian Stan) – except that Bucky is now a villain: The Winter Soldier. Which makes the punctuation in the film’s title a little confusing; after all, Captain America and The Winter Soldier are not one and the same person.

Anyhow, here’s wondering who will have programmed poor Bucky to become the much-dreaded Winter Soldier, since the Soviet Menace has gone the way of the 20th century. The little we’re told about the upcoming Captain America movie is that the Captain will be battling “a powerful yet shadowy enemy in present-day Washington, D.C.” Perhaps one of those people reading your emails and tracking your phone conversations? And that could be just any politician or top-level federal agent.

‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ release date

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is scheduled for release in North America and about a dozen other territories (e.g. Russia, Argentina) on April 3 and 4, 2014. As per the IMDb, the Captain America sequel will reach France on April 16; and Brazil and Germany on May 1, Labor Day.

In addition to Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan, Captain America: The Winter Soldier features Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Cobie Smulders, Hayley Atwell, Emily VanCamp, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Toby Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Frank Grillo, Garry Shandling, Georges St-Pierre, veterans Jenny Agutter and Robert Redford (yes, he of The Way We Were), and possibly Stan Lee.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, whose last big-screen release was the 2008 comedy short Carfuckers. The screenplay is credited to Captain America: The First Avenger screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely – both also credited for Thor: The Dark World; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and its sequels; and, gasp, Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier poster: Marvel / Walt Disney Studios.