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katikatSome time ago, I posted my opinion on GI Joe: Retaliation featuring Dwayne Johnson, Adrianne Palicki and Bruce Willis. I saw the trailer - link - and read the spoilers and... I was really, really miffed. Why? Because of Channing Tatum's Duke and what happens to the character in the first ten minutes of said movie. And now it looks like this major screw-up came back to bite Paramount in the ass big time!
A few days ago, Paramount pulled the movie from the roster even though the promo campaign was going strong and all the toys and stuff were in the shops/warehouses already. Their explanation? They wanted to re-do it in 3D and release it next year. 9 months for a 3D retooling? Nobody believed that. So Deadline went digging - link - and came up with some surprising news...
They needed a test audience to tell them that killing off the main character of the first movie was a bad idea? I know that some people didn't like Channing Tatum as Duke but he was DUKE! One of the main characters of the whole franchise. And they kill him off in the first ten minutes! Whoever thought this was a good idea should be fired on spot! I really hope the reshoots mean that Duke won't die. That he will be held captive or... or... something! Because I'm a big fan of Channing Tatum and the murder of his character made me very, very angry!
A few days ago, Paramount pulled the movie from the roster even though the promo campaign was going strong and all the toys and stuff were in the shops/warehouses already. Their explanation? They wanted to re-do it in 3D and release it next year. 9 months for a 3D retooling? Nobody believed that. So Deadline went digging - link - and came up with some surprising news...
But the fact is that Paramount became extremely concerned about G.I. Joe 2‘s box office prospects worldwide after its test scores were mediocre to bad. Reshoots were needed. Plus, the moguls realized what a complete miscalculation it was to kill off Channing Tatum in the sequel. And even more so at the start of the film. You will remember that Tatum wasn’t a star when the first G.I. Joe was released. But since then his back-to-back successes in The Vow and 21 Jump Street have made him into a draw. And it turned out that the only bright spot for audiences as a result of the G.I. Joe 2 testing was the aborted relationship between Tatum and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Plus look at the movie poster for Retaliation: you wouldn’t even know Tatum is in the sequel. Now the movie is being reworked — and reshoots don’t lose a valuable leading man like Tatum by killing him off. “The 3D is an excuse as to not reveal the Tatum of it all,” one of my sources tells me. Of course this June Tatum appears in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike as a stripper (inspired by Tatum’s own experiences, pre-stardom). My sources insist Paramount didn’t want uniformed Channing to compete with stripping Channing on the same weekend. Not with those abs.
They needed a test audience to tell them that killing off the main character of the first movie was a bad idea? I know that some people didn't like Channing Tatum as Duke but he was DUKE! One of the main characters of the whole franchise. And they kill him off in the first ten minutes! Whoever thought this was a good idea should be fired on spot! I really hope the reshoots mean that Duke won't die. That he will be held captive or... or... something! Because I'm a big fan of Channing Tatum and the murder of his character made me very, very angry!
