Channing Tatum, Derek Cianfrance at Variety Toronto Cover Party

Channing Tatum and Derek Cianfrance raised the roof at Variety‘s annual Toronto Film Festival party on Friday. The duo was on hand to celebrate their cover story on their new film, “Roofman,” which tells the real-life saga of notorious criminal Jeffrey Manchester. In his toast, Variety Co-Editor-in-Chief Ramin Setoodeh hailed the film as “the one of the big discoveries of the year” and called Tatum and Cianfrance “the perfect match.”

“Roofman,” which premieres on Saturday, is already generating awards buzz for Tatum, who plays a father who robs McDonald’s restaurants to take care of his kids. After breaking out of jail, he camps out in a Toys “R” Us, hoping to evade capture. The film was a chance to work with Cianfrance, who had approached him nearly two decades ago to star in “Blue Valentine,” a role that ultimately went to Ryan Gosling.

“I’ve never forgotten that I passed on ‘Blue Valentine,’” Tatum told Variety’s Angelique Jackson on the red carpet. “I was scared of it.”

But Cianfrance didn’t hold it against Tatum, remaining a huge fan of his work.

“I always felt like he was the best part in every movie I’d ever seen that he was in,” Cianfrance said. “When this movie came up, I met with Channing in the park, and I said, ‘Hey, you remember we met, like, 17 years ago?’ And he was like, ‘I think about it all the time.’ And I was like, ‘Well, next time I offer you something, just say yes.’”

Cianfrance says Tatum was born to play Manchester because he could deliver both the humor and the heart that the film needed.

“He threw himself into it with just all parts of himself into the movie,” Cianfrance said.

Some of those, err, parts are on display in the finished film, including in one scene where Tatum gets caught bathing in the toy store by a manager (Peter Dinklage) and then runs away fully nude.

“That was just a messy scene,” Tatum said. “Literally, everything’s out there for the world. I mean, poor Peter Dinklage, he got the whole view. There’s no graceful way to jump up onto a bike rack when you know the camera is dead behind you and they’re right down the barrel… We were just trying to not see the man bits.”

In addition to Dinklage, “Roofman” co-stars Kristen Dunst, LaKeith Stanfield and Ben Mendelsohn. Paramount will release the film, which was produced by Miramax, in theaters on Oct. 10.

Variety‘s cover party, which was sponsored by RBC and Fiji Water, drew a crowd of Hollywood executives and creatives, including Miramax chief Jonathan Glickman, Bleecker Street President and Chief Marketing Officer Tyler DiNapoli, “Succession” star Arian Moayed, CAA’s Missy Davy, Sundance Film Festival head Eugene Hernandez and “Roofman” producer and Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences President Lynette Howell Taylor. But most of the attention was focused on “Roofman” as it prepared to be unveiled to the world.

“Channing and Derek, your films have touched audiences around the world,” Mary DePaoli, RBC’s chief marketing officer, said in her toast. “‘Roofman’ is going to do the same thing. We can’t wait to have it pulling our heartstrings.”

Scroll for an inside look at the celebration: