Channing Tatum is being sued by fellow strippers, Thomas “Awesome” Austin and London Steele . They are claiming that the new film Magic Mike is based on their lives as strippers.  Channing Tatum stepped up to address the lawsuit and the rumors and says that the stripper world he was once involved in, was not recreated for the movie, the movie was fictional. Hit the jump .

Steph Bassanini

After receiving news that his former fellow strippers — Thomas “Awesome” Austin and London Steele – are claiming that Magic Mikewas ripped off their lives, Channing Tatum has stepped forward to address the lawsuit at hand.

“Those guys have been trying to make money off of me since I got into this business,” Tatum, 32, told reporters during a press conference promoting he film. “Literally, London was one of the guys that sold the video.”

That’s not all what the exotic-dancer-turned-actor had to say about the situation.

“Thank God that my friend here saw and we made a movie from it,” Tatum continued, motioning to Magic Mikedirector Steven Soderbergh.

The movie, which opens June 28, was said to have been created after the Oscar-winning filmmaker learned of Tatum’s real-life experience as a former male stripper.

“Look, there’s nothing that’s factual in this whole movie other than I was an 18-year-old kid, went into this world, dropped out of college, played football and was living on my sisters couch. There’s not one character that I took from my real life. This is just the world that I went into and that I had a perspective on. We created everything from a fictional place.”
Celebuzz consulted an attorney to assess if Austin and Steele indeed have a legit case against Tatum and the film.

Attorney Anthony Friedman of Los Angeles firm Levene, Neale, Bender, Yoo & Brill L.L.P. told us there’s a “really slim chance of them succeeding in any legal action.”
He broke it down, saying:

“Well, in the world we live in, anybody can file a lawsuit for anything. With regard to this, unless these guys had specific copyrights on names that they were calling themselves, or specific moves that they were doing, and they had an application filed with the US Patent Office, and Trademark Office, then yes, they could potentially [take action]. But the chances of them having done that are probably really slim and the chances of them succeeding in any legal action are probably very small. Though in this day and age, people file the lawsuit and hope to get some money out of it.”

Friedman then added, “Legally, I don’t think they have any chance.”

[Source]