G.I. Joe: Retaliation: Why Was It Really Delayed?
No one you know was more upset about G.I. Joe: Retaliation getting bumped from opening June 29 of this year to March 29 of next year than I was. I mean, by the time those Cobra banners unfurl on the White House, I could be dead! When Paramount announced the move last week, the reasons seemed sketchy: Really, converting it to 3-D? This is a good business decision five weeks out from its scheduled release date? Sure enough, now this cover story is starting to show its holes.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a number of factors contributed to Paramount’s cold feet.
- Fears over competing with The Amazing Spider-Man, which opens less than a week after G.I.J:R‘s original release date (which executives couldn’t have anticipated that?).
- A crappy opening for Battleship, another military-themed action movie based on a toy (which, fair enough, was sort of a surprise).
- A rewrite involving Channing Tatum’s character.
The last of these seems to be the biggest concern. (Warning: Spoilers follow.) The Retaliation trailer makes it fairly clear that Tatum’s Duke doesn’t survive past the movie’s first few scenes. That might have been fine had Retaliation — effectively a reboot that quickly dispenses with the characters no one cared about in the 2009 original — come out in 2011, when Tatum was the poor man’s Chris Evans. But 2012 Tatum has already had a couple of big films in The Vow and 21 Jump Street, so killing him off in Retaliation would be a bad strategic move for the franchise. The original Retaliation release date also would have put a dead Tatum opposite a live, lap-dancing Tatum in Magic Mike, so Paramount would have sacrificed its potential female/gay male audience, too.
Paramount’s move may be defensible from a business standpoint, but none of that mitigates the emotional toll it has taken on me. Do I care whether I see more of the charisma vacuum that is Channing Tatum? Not really. I want to see Bruce Willis pop out of a car trunk and start WASTING DUDES LIKE WHOOOOOOOOOA! The studio better hope that my blood lust holds steady for the next 10 months.
Filed Under: Channing Tatum, Movie News, Summer Movies
More from
-
We Went There: Clippers-Mavs and DeAndre Jordan Night in Los Angeles
-
No Messi, No Problem: Neymar Becomes a Superstar
-
World Series Weekend: Five Questions for Three (or Two) Royals-Mets Games
-
Brand Echh: Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton Can’t Save the Lame ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’
-
50 Scenes That Do Not Appear in the Fox ‘X-Files’ Revival
More Channing Tatum
-
Hump Day: The Utterly OMG ‘Magic Mike XXL’
-
The Magic Behind Mike
-
Lightning Round: Sony Announces a Guy-Centric Ghostbusters Spinoff
-
Jupiter Descending: What Does the Wachowskis’ Box Office Flop Mean for Its Stars?
-
‘Magic Mike XXL’ Teaser Trailer: You Are Cordially Invited to Ride Channing Tatum’s Pony
More Hollywood Prospectus
-
Brand Echh: Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton Can’t Save the Lame ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’
-
50 Scenes That Do Not Appear in the Fox ‘X-Files’ Revival
-
In Praise of Beach Slang, 2015’s Best, Most Sincere Rock Band
-
Who Was Missing From Taylor Swift’s Miami Squad?
-
Happy ‘Halloween’: The Best Horror-Movie Monsters