Especially compared to the frenzy of social media and internet updates we had seen for several months running, the silence regarding G.I. Joe: Retaliation over the past month has been deafening, and honestly I think it will continue to be that way probably until closer to the end of the year.
We talked about this a little bit during last night’s recording of the What’s on Joe Mind podcast, and I feel pretty comfortable saying that once we hit the Super Bowl, we will probably see another trailer (hopefully with some different footage) and I think promotion will seriously ramp up at that point for the March release. Until then, though, I think things will remain relatively quiet.
However, G.I. Joe: Retaliation director Jon Chu did speak with New Media Rockstars, speaking mostly about new projects with superstar Justin Bieber, but also touching quite a bit on G.I. Joe: Retaliation as well. Mr. Chu repeated much of what he said to GeneralsJoes a while ago, repeating that none of the film delay was due to Channing Tatum or fears about the film’s performance, merely relying on the ever-changing technology and implementing some 3D elements.
There isn’t a whole lot of new information, but with the G.I. Joe community being somewhat starved for Retaliation updates these days, we will take what we can get. Check out the full interview right here.
This interview only reinforced my opinions of this guys. He seems completely in his element dealing with Justin Bieber. But, from day one he seemed like a very odd and risky selection to direct a big budget action adventure movie. There is nothing on his resume to indicate that he was ready to helm a project of this size.
He seems to understand the world of GI Joe which is a big improvement over the director of the earlier movie, but I get the impression that he was totally unprepared for a project of this size and scope. Jumping from straight to dvd dance movies to summer blockbuster is a quantum leap. At this point, I think its safe to say that if the studio was given a mulligan on its choice of director, that they would take it in a second.
GI Joe is a franchise on life support. The last thing GI Joe needed was bad press. That’s already happened due to the movie delay. If the movie turns into a John Carter sized turkey it will certainly mean the end of the movie franchise, and potentially the end of the floundering toy line.
We needed an experienced and capable director that was willing to listen to fans and put in the time to get to know the GI Joe universe. Instead we got a fan boy who turned out to be in way over his head.
Why do you say that? It wasn’t his choice to delay the movie. If he had a choice I’m sure it would have been to come out on time. The studio is to blame for the delay and the decision to convert it to 3D so late in the game.
That’s only if you take the studio’s story about the delay being entirely due to 3D conversion. I think there’s a lot more to the story. You can’t take internet rumors at face value either, but if you pool the collected rumors from the GI Joe boards and Hollywood rumors sites the gist of teh story is that is that early focus group screening went poorly, the script is being revised to include more Channing Tatum, and that the film as previously cut had a very amateurish almost straight to dvd feel to it.
The film was just 5 weeks from release. All of the editing and post production work had to have been finished. Considering all of the advertising, merchandising, etc, there’s no way they push it back if its not a turkey.
Hopefully it can be re-worked and improved.