IESB had the lucky chance to chat with G.I. Joe producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura the day after the third (or is it fourth?) fan backlash against the live action big screen adaptation (Coincidence, I think not!). If you haven’t been following, yesterday it was announced that Marlon Wayans was cast as Ripcord (Boooo!) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in negotiations to join the film (YAY!). di Bonaventura attempts to defend the Waynes decision by telling us that there wasn’t a “person who didn’t think it was a no-brainer.” Ummm What?:
“When we were trying to figure out who would be the right element to make this combination work of Duke as the leader and Ripcord as the best friend who sorta gets Duke in trouble all the time and Duke has to bail him out all the time and have fun with him, we needed a guy who’s gonna be funny and we needed a guy who was going to be a good actor. And we went to Marlon and said, “We’d love to talk to you.” And he’s a gigantic GI Joe fan and immediately asked, “is Cobra in it, is Destro in it?” I mean before he even got to read the script he was so much fun to talk to because he understood what it was. So he got it immediately, and when we did the test.”
“It was frankly the easiest casting decision we’ve made in the movie once we saw the test.”
“…He’s playing a military character who’s got some real good quips but he’s got to be good, he’s got to be physical, and I mean Marlon is a strapping guy, he’s got good size to him. So, I think the fans will feel, when they see him, that he is playing the solider that they anticipate anyone from the G.I. Joe group to be.
Other tidbits include:
- They have not yet cast Destro but have narrowed the list down to about 4 or 5 names: “All of them are of the English, Irish, Scottish persuasion shall we say.”
- Destro, Zartan and Hawk will be announced in the next two weeks.
- “In the comic book, you don’t know where the location of the Pit [G.I. Joe headquarters] is. So, the idea that it’s based in Brussels is false, the idea that it is a European base or an international kind of organization is false. It is the G.I. Joe Organization.”
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in talks to play a Villain role
- “Duke is absolutely the embodiment of what the pre-83 Joe is. And what the pre-83 Joe is The Real American Hero”
- They again have the U.S. Army’s support.
- “There is an international aspect, we’re travelling around, we’re going to be a lot of places and it’s going to be really fun, it doesn’t make it an international…it isn’t the fear that everyone is having, we just want to have different places around the world to give the movie scope.”
- They are not currently planning for a sequel or spin-off film.
- Assumption is that the movie will be PG-13, but definitely not R (Read: could possibly be PG).
Shooting begins in a mere five weeks but di Bonaventura is making idiotic statements like “we’re looking at it from a budgetary standpoint and how many characters can we afford.” Doesn’t sound good to me. But don’t worry Joe fans, Lorenzo promises that “if you’re a Joe vs. Cobra fan, then you will be feel incredibly happy about the movie.” I’ve always wanted to “feel happy” about a movie…
You can read the full interview on IESB.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:07 am
“Movie website tries to defend GI Joe, fails.”
That one seems to happen more often :)
January 8th, 2008 at 4:31 am
okay. Officially this movie is starting to sound like a trainwreck. If only they cast Daniel Craig as Destro I’d have a little more faith.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:12 am
since when were Duke & Ripcord fucking Abbot & Costello?! Maybe I don’t know the comics that well, but I know the cartoons as well as anyone, & I don’t remember that description at all. I defended Wayans a couple days ago, but this is starting to sound really stupid.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
The following letters of disgust are brought to you by my forehead smashing my keyboard
hjyus erser ugy yuer hjyu hu hueseryu yere
and a little to the left
seaweze wea qwedd sdaasd
ripcord and duke, buds,, whatever.
nuff said.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
The only thing I want to know is, are they 12″ tall or 3 ¾ tall?
January 8th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
this movie started good with the news of ray park as snake eyes and took a major nose dive with marlon(dungeons and dragons)wayans , this movie is going to suck!! summers was a very bad choice for director ,hasbro please step in and make this right for the fans , larry hama help!!!
January 8th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
Epic Failure is Epic.
You’d think Bonaventura is TRYING to make promising IPs like Transformers and GI Joe as awful as possible.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Aside from Ray Park as Snake-Eyes, nothing announced about this movie makes me “feel incredibly happy”. I don’t care if Ripcord is black (so long as they remember to change his real name so it isn’t Wallace A. Weems), but the idea that he and Duke are like most every comedic duo in history (a straight man & a goof-off) is wrong.
There is also the point that they could still be using that script where Duke’s slightly less serious best friend (the lamely named Rex) turns into Cobra Commander because of some chemical accident. Do you see where I’m going with this?
The horror. The horror.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:27 am
umm….wasn’t the pit in new jersey??
or is that just a false memory from childhood??
I used to collect the comics though, so it may be rooted in some sort of fact?
January 9th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Its too bad that they didnt at least cast Wayans as STALKER… That would sort of have made sense…. Both racially, and because Stalker was one of the higher ranking Joes, at least in the comic….
January 9th, 2008 at 10:30 am
The pit was located in Springfield, Massachussets.
Sadly, I still have the comic that proves it.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Springfield was Cobra’s HQ. The Pit was located underneath the motor pool of the US Army Chaplains Assistants school at Fort Wadsworth (which is in Staten Island)
January 10th, 2008 at 2:56 am
At least until it was destroyed. Then the Joes were made into a “mobile unit” that didn’t have a permanent home. Then a new Pit was constructed under 3 non-descript quonset huts in the middle of the Utah desert.
In the current comics, the Joes are based out of a complex called The Rock, built into a mountain in Yellowstone Park in Wyoming.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Do you not all remember Van Helsing?
That movie is one of the few movies so bad I can’t even let it be background noise when it airs on TBS or something. Stephen Sommers is terrible and his only redemption is that The Mummy had a few watchable scenes. Everything else he has ever done is 100% trash. I feel like I should report a theft when I pay for something he made. GI Joe will be terrible. Mr. Sommers cannot touch a film without turning it into a big fat AIDS sandwich.