Alex Pettyfer shares his own idea for a Magic Mike 2 that hasn't been made. The English actor, who first rose to prominence playing teenage spy Alex Rider in Stormbreaker, played Adam "The Kid" in the original film. He currently stars in the Marianna Palka-directed thriller Collection.
In the first Magic Mike, from acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh, Pettyfer's Adam is taken under the wing of Channing Tatum's titular protagonist, who is a marquee stripper at the Tampa Bay club Xquisite. Mike encourages Adam to join his profession, and while the latter leans into his new lifestyle, Mike begins to become disillusioned with it, particularly after forming a relationship with Adam's sister Brooke (Cody Horn). The Kid develops a drug addiction that gets him in financial trouble, requiring Mike to use his savings to bail him out, the last straw that convinces him to quit. By the end of the film, Xquisite's owner, Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), has promoted Adam to lead dancer in Mike's stead.
Now, when asked in an exclusive interview with SR which of his roles he would return to for a sequel, Pettyfer admits he wanted The Kid's on-screen story to continue. He had hoped Adam would be able to have an American Gigolo-esque story of sex and intrigue, and begged Soderbergh to follow up his character's narrative. Instead, Pettyfer was not part of Magic Mike XXL, which the actor says had nothing to do with any behind-the-scenes drama:
I know which one I would revisit. I begged Soderbergh all the time. I would love to do The Kid from Magic Mike. The narrative of a lot of people ... because I didn't do Magic Mike triple XL, oh, why was that? And obviously, people always dive into the gossip and it's not really anything to do with the gossip. It's me, and the narrative was that we weren't bringing back Cody Horn. And the split at the end of Magic Mike, of me carrying on and Channing wanting to have a different vehicle towards his life choices, but what basically happened was, and this was the narrative of Soderbergh, is that me and Matthew ended up moving to Australia and we started our own kind of Chip and Dale's down there. I always wanted The Kid to come to England or somewhere and kind of have an American gigolo kind of story, obviously Richard Gere. Calm and have maybe a little bit of a political element where he gets caught up in something like that. I would revisit that. I loved playing that character and I always loved character pieces like that.
Magic Mike XXL takes place three years after the original, and begins with Mike's friends informing him that Dallas went to start a new show abroad, essentially leaving them out of work. He took only The Kid with him - which makes sense, given their alignment at the end of Magic Mike - but also meant Pettyfer was left out of the sequel. Though he would love to revisit Adam in the context of an individual character study, Pettyfer admits to SR that he doesn't think it's a real possibility.
Both films were critical and financial successes, so a return to the Magic Mike world is not out of the realm of possibility, and would likely be welcomed by fans. However, the Adam-centered story Pettyfer imagines sounds like a significant shift in tone, and without an ensemble of attractive actors doing dance routines, it's hard to know that it would appeal to the original's core audience. Regardless of what the final product could look like, it sounds as if audiences won't ever get a chance to see it.