How Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin Built Their Production Company Free Association

Channing Tatum and his producing accomplice Reid Carolin aren’t simply the brains — and brawn — behind “Magic Mike.” They’ve constructed up their firm Free Affiliation into a spot to go for progressive storytelling, together with the highway journey film “Canine” (which opens on Feb. 18), which they co-directed; the Starz TV collection “Step Up: Highwater”; and the thriller “Pussy Island,” which will probably be Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut.

“I believe it’s a superb partnership,” says Steven Soderbergh, who’s directing “Magic Mike’s Final Dance,” which Tatum will star in and Carolin wrote. “I believe they’ve a shared sense of individuals and the way the world works.”

Tatum and Carolin communicate to Selection about Free Affiliation.

How did the 2 of you meet?

CHANNING TATUM: Reid wrote the primary model of a film that I used to be in known as “Cease-Loss,” after which he assisted the director, Kimberly Peirce. And so we had been in Austin collectively for a complete film, after which after that we stayed shut. And we had been like, “All proper, let’s make one thing.” And throughout the first yr, we had produced our first movie.

REID CAROLIN: That was “10 12 months,” or it will definitely turned “10 Years.” You look again on the solid [which includes Chris Pratt and Oscar Isaac] — each single individual is a heavy hitter now.

After which “Magic Mike” got here subsequent?

TATUM: Yeah. The entire purpose “Magic Mike” began is that they requested Soderbergh if he’d do the film of my stripping days. And he was like, “Completely.” I known as him up. He’s like, “Let’s meet at Carneys on Sundown, and we’ll discuss it.” I sat down throughout from him, and he’s like, “We should always finance it ourselves. You need to act in it. I’ll direct it. And your buddy ought to write it.” He had by no means learn something that Reid had written.

CAROLIN: I met him for the primary time once I pitched him the script at your home. He was like, “That’s nice. Change this to that.”

TATUM: We didn’t sleep. You wrote it in a month.

What’s your writing course of like?

CAROLIN: I write issues. He doesn’t say them.

TATUM: It writes itself. We simply have a look at the web page, and our concepts manifest.

CAROLIN: What we do is sit round and throw out a ton of dangerous concepts—after which as you push on them and switch them into one thing new, they turn out to be hopefully respectable concepts. After which we’ll begin workshopping the scenes. We rehearsed quite a bit for [“Dog”] and then you definitely get to the set and also you notice, “Oh, my God. None of that is going to work.” And it re-forms into one thing new. So I might say the writing course of on all of the issues we do could be very amorphous and fluid. And for us, it’s extra of a discovery course of. We by no means have a look at one thing as completed till it’s within the can.

How would you describe Free Affiliation?

TATUM: We kind of have a look at it as a pirate ship. We wished to assist different actors make films. That was an enormous a part of it, as a result of we realized quite a bit. I’ve realized extra within the growth aspect of flicks than I ever did on set.

CAROLIN: We all the time wish to be stunned. We all the time wish to uncover new territory, and push ourselves to a spot that we haven’t created in earlier than.