Channing Tatum admits several directors told him not to make his movie ‘Dog’ (spoilers)

Spoiler for Dog which Channing revealed on Kimmel is below
Channing Tatum was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night and he really sold me on his new movie, Dog! It’s about an army ranger who goes on a road trip with a difficult dog. The trailer is below and it looks like a great date movie. Spoiler – Channing said that people always ask him if the dog dies at the end of the movie. He didn’t directly say that the dog lives, but he did say it has a good ending. Channing co-wrote, co-directed and of course stars in Dog. If you want to know more about how that film was made you can read Channing’s Variety piece that Kaiser covered last week. She didn’t oversell it, Channing is a great interview and comes across like a man who is humble, honest and vulnerable. Plus he looks so hot to me now that he’s bald! Here’s some of what he told Kimmel and the video is below. It’s well worth watching and I laughed out loud a few times.

On the new Magic Mike
I am not going to do the whole [body] waxing thing. A little bit of hair is fine. I’m very sore [training for that].
I wanted to make the Super Bowl [of] stripper movies. I want to have professional [dancers], the best dancers in the world going off. Secondly I wanted to have a really strong female central character.
On his movie ‘Dog’
Marley and Me scarred everyone. Every single person that I’ve told I’ve made a dog move they’re like ‘I’m not going to see it unless you tell me if the dog lives.’ It’s a good ending, so everyone knows.
Every single time that I have worked with an animal it’s gone horribly awry. [In a] Cohen brother movie we sat there for six hours and the dog would not bark.
When we were trying to decide what [to] direct, this director [offered to help]. [We told him what the story was about] and he’s like ‘oh don’t do that. Any story but that.’
“Did you get this feedback from more than one director? Are [they] famous directors?”
Yes, Soderbergh was one of them. A lot of them that you’ll know, [they’re] smarter than we are.

[From YouTube]

Channing didn’t even mention The Lost City, his movie with Sandra Bullock out March 25th. I can’t wait for that! Magic Mike 3 doesn’t have a release date yet, and since they’re training for it now I’m assuming the earliest we’ll get it will be very late this year or early next year. You know I’ll be going to that opening weekend too.

As for Dog, Channing told Variety that they deliberately made it PG-13 so that it was more accessible. It’s a dog movie that’s somewhat wholesome and he just told everyone not to worry because it has a happy ending. It’s going to kill at the box office, even with the pandemic. Those directors who told him not to make it are going to be kicking themselves.

Channing said he was able to direct the dogs in the film (there are three who play the lead) with treats and that Belgian Malinois are “hyper driven, they’re work dogs they love it.” He admitted one of them bit him for real though and that he has a scar on his butt! I hope we get to see that in Magic Mike 3.