It’s been six years since Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan announced their separation, and in that time both of these attractive actor-dancers appear to have very much moved on. Dewan and her fiancé, Steve Kazee, are expecting their second child together, while Tatum is going strong with his lover and style consultant, Zoë Kravitz.
And yet the former couple, who were declared legally single in 2019, are somehow still in court hashing out their divorce settlement. The sticking point? Magic Mike.
Remind me of this couple’s history?
Dewan and Tatum met in 2006 while co-starring in Step Up and started dating pretty much immediately. (If you have any questions about how that happened, may I direct you to this montage?) They got married in 2009 and welcomed their daughter, Everly, four years later. In 2018, the couple announced their separation after almost a decade of marriage, and Dewan filed for divorce six months later. In 2020,they reportedly signed divorce papers and settled on a fifty-fifty custody agreement for their daughter.
Since then, both Tatum and Dewan have gotten into new and ostensibly serious relationships. Dewan and Kazee were seen hanging out in 2018 and announced in 2020 that they were engaged, welcoming their first child together a month later. Earlier this year, Dewan revealed via a video of her fiancé serenading her that she is pregnant again.
Meanwhile, after a brief stint writing romantic Instagram poetry for Jessie J, Tatum was seen out and about with Kravitz after being cast in her directorial debut. Last year, Kravitz was seen wearing what looked like an engagement ring, and several outletsreported that the couple had gotten engaged. Whether or not that is true, it’s not the only metric for the seriousness of their relationship: Tatum is Lenny Kravitz’s biggest Instagram stan, suggesting he’s rapidly becoming a permanent fixture in the world’s hottest family.
So what’s holding up the divorce?
According to People, Tatum and Dewan recently called on each other as witnesses in their ongoing divorce trial, which seems to revolve around the intellectual property and earnings of the Magic Mike franchise. The first two movies came out while Dewan and Tatum were still married, and a handful of spinoff enterprises followed, including a live Las Vegas show that opened in 2017 and a London version that launched in late 2018. (To give you a sense of how much money we’re talking here, Tatum was said to have made close to $60 million from the first movie — though he later claimed he made less than $40 million.) Since the couple announced their separation, Tatum has returned for a third movie and executive-produced a reality-TV show that aired in 2021. A musical adaptation that was announced in 2013 has yet to see the light of day.
According to NBC, Dewan filed a petition on Tuesday arguing that, though she wasn’t formally involved in the making of the movies, Tatum developed and co-financed the original concept “during marriage with community efforts and marital funds.” In court documents, she apparently accused her ex-husband of making “calculated” moves to hide the franchise’s licensing and profits with a “complex web of LLCs, holding companies and partnerships.” She also reportedlyclaims he made business decisions about the franchise during their marriage without her consent and, once they were separated, “collected one hundred percent of the profits” without telling her. Other accusations include failing to disclose “business opportunities,” transferring licensing rights to a third party without her permission, and hiding Magic Mike profits in an “irrevocable trust.”
Tatum’s attorneys responded on Wednesday with a new filing, per NBC, calling Dewan’s accusations a “last ditch effort” to delay the former couple’s drawn-out divorce. Tatum’s documents reportedly say Dewan has “been involved in all aspects of community investments, opportunities and transactions” but also claim the actor has “continued to create and develop” the character in the six years since he’s been separated — essentially arguing that some of the IP is joint marital property but some belongs to Tatum alone.
What’s next?
Peoplesaysboth parties put each other on their preliminary witness lists with Tatum also naming Dewan’s fiancé to testify to their “cohabitation, joint expenses and all related matters.” They’ve also asked a handful of Magic Mike collaborators to testify, including directors Steven Soderbergh and Greg Jacobs and screenwriter Reid Carolin. Although Magic Mike isn’t the only shared property they’re sorting out, Dewan apparently wrote in her filing that how the franchise gets divided will “impact the resolution of the other financial issues in this case.”
The Cut has reached out to representatives for Dewan and Tatum and will update this post if we hear back.
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