Channing Tatum Says Making Jupiter Ascending Was A Nightmare

Channing Tatum says working on 2015’s Jupiter Ascending was a nightmare. In the 2010s, it was nearly impossible to take a trip to the theater without seeing Tatum top billing a film. Tatum’s early success started in 2006, when he starred alongside Amanda Bynes in She’s the Man. His career grew steadily from there with his role in the Step Up franchise before he exploded on the acting scene with roles in romantic comedies like Dear John and The Vow, action comedies like 21 Jump Street, and the semi-autobiographical dramatic comedy Magic Mike. All in all, between 2010 and 2017, Tatum starred in 23 movies.

Jupiter Ascending is a sci-fi space adventure Cinderella story written, produced, and directed by the Wachowskis. The film starred Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones and Tatum as former-space soldier Caine Wise. Wise saves Jones from an assassination attempt and explains Jones’ true identity as space royalty and her family’s intention of preventing her from accepting her inheritance. The film received widely mixed reviews, with the majority leaning toward the negative for the Wachowskis’ film. Box office-wise, the film didn’t do much better. With a budget of $176 million, the film only earned $183.9 million worldwide. The film received a series of delays, which pushed it back from its original 2014 release date and is ultimately remembered as a flop for the year and the Wachowskis.

In an interview with Variety, as Tatum looks forward to his upcoming projects, he reflects on his early success and admits that ‘Jupiter Ascending was a nightmare from the jump.’ Tatum explains that during the time, he had taken 4 movies consecutively, which wore his energy down. The film also took seven months to film, which also drained the actor’s energy. Read Tatum’s full comment below:

“I took four movies back-to-back without any time off. I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be in those last two movies because I didn’t have the energy. […] Jupiter Ascending was a nightmare from the jump. It was a sideways movie. All of us were there for seven months, busting our hump. It was just tough.”

After a four-year break from acting, Tatum is returning to the big screen with Dog, The Lost City of D alongside Sandra Bullock, and Magic Mike’s Last Dance, the third and final Magic Mike film. One of Tatum’s longest-running works-in-progress that has yet to come to fruition was a Gambit solo film for the X-Men mutant Remy LeBeau, who has the ability to mentally control kinetic energy. After five years of delays, the film was shelved indefinitely by Disney last year, but Tatum says he still wants to play the character in the future.

While Jupiter Ascending had many flaws, the reception of the film was not entirely on Tatum’s shoulders. The long filming schedule, as well as the creative team’s bold vision, might have made Tatum’s fatigue worse and colored the whole experience as overly negative. It’s needless to say that Jupiter Ascending wasn’t the end of Tatum’s career. With a slate of new movies set for the next year, Tatum’s break from acting seems to have done him good. All that’s left to do is hope he can keep a good pace to prevent himself from burning out again.

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