This just hit my Facebook account and I thought it was worth sharing:

Artist on Artist with Channing Tatum and Sienna Miller

‘G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’ stars Channing Tatum and Sienna Miller tell us their funniest, most action-packed moments from the set, including the time Channing dropped sienna on the ground!

RottenTomatoes.com

Sure, we’re jumping the gun with only a few registered reviews posted but surprisingly enough, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is currently at 91% positive at RottenTomatoes.com.  This number is sure to fluctuate as more contributors see the film but the comments on the site seem to bode well for the film’s box office.  Here are a few of the more interesting comments thus far:

• G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra’ is… a summer movie, through and through, pure pulp preposterousness, one of the most successful little-boy adventure movies in a long time.
• Pure escapist fun.
• Stephen Sommers’ film captures the silly energy that made the series such a childhood favorite and finds a way to fulfill the expectations of fanboys from 13 to 30 (okay, 33) in the process.
• If I was 10 years old, GI Joe would be one of the best movies I had ever seen. As a grown up it’s one of the better summer movies; a delightfully light, fun and action-packed kick in the ass.

Love it or hate it, we’ll all find out on Friday!

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Ben Fritz, a reporter for the LA Times, conducted an interview with Larry Hama about his involvement as “creative consultant” for the Rise of Cobra feature film.

Snake Eyes TALKING? ‘G.I. Joe’ creator Larry Hama fought against the idea

11:43 AM PT, Aug 4 2009

Ben Fritz, who covers the business of Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times, caught up with Larry Hama, the creator of the “G.I. Joe” commando team mythology, and put together this interesting Hero Complex report on “the real American hero” as a film property….

On Friday, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” opens and fanboys have some reason to be nervous. Though Aint-It-Cool’s Harry Knowles gave it a good review, Paramounthasn’t exactly embraced devotees of the toys and ’80s cartoon.

Fred Meyer, owner of the website JoeBattleLines.com, said he was one of several fan community leaders invited to a meeting by Paramount and Hasbro at a G.I. Joe fan convention two years ago to discuss what they wanted to see in the film.

“That was the last time we had any involvement,” he noted. “They’re not taking advantage of the fact that they have this free army of PR people out there.”

Perhaps more notably, Paramount didn’t bring the movie to Comic-Con International, even though there was a panel for Hasbro’s new toy line based on the movie. The movie’s producer was rather blunt when asked about the decision.

“You can never win with those guys,” Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, producer of both “Transformers” films and “G.I. Joe,” said of the San Diego convention. “They feel they’re the keepers of the fanboys flag and have a deep childhood association with many of these properties. And we know the hard-core fans are already coming to see the movie.”

As my story in The Times business section explained, Paramount has a different agenda with the new “G.I. Joe” film. It’s aggressively marketing the film to military, blue collar and red state audiences. In fact, the movie’s premiere on Friday wasn’t in Hollywood or New York, but at Andrews Air Force Base, the home of Air Force One.

All hope isn’t lost for old school G.I. Joe fans, however. The studio hired as a consultant a man who’s very familiar to them: Larry Hama, the writer of the comic books that originated the “Real American Hero” revival of the brand in the 1980s. Hama also wrote the file cards that came with the ’80s toy line and gave shape to the characters who populated the after-school cartoon and, in somewhat different form, the new movie.

I interviewed Hama for the story and, while we managed to fit only one quote in the piece, saved the best of the rest for Hero Complex readers.

Continue reading →

From the good folks at IGN.com:

Exclusive: G.I. Joe 2 Buzz

Producer talks sequel and future characters.

by Chris Tilly, IGN UK

UK, August 4, 2009 – With G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra hitting screens worldwide this weekend, there will doubtless be rumblings of a sequel in the coming days, so IGN thought we’d go straight to the horse’s mouth and ask producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura about the possibility of G.I. Joe 2.

“It’s really the fans and how they vote” he explained. “If they vote big enough then the studio will see money in it and then they’ll come to us and say ‘Come on you guys, let’s go’.”

When asked about the open-ended nature of Rise of the Cobra‘s conclusion, the producer responded: “You never know. I’ve found over my career that if you really think about a second and third one, you f**k up the first one. We’re not naive – we know there’s lots of stories, we know this kind of thing has that possibility, but we’ve never really spent a moment thinking about the next movie or talking about it.”
Continue reading →

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

If you’re an internet-savvy movie buff, you’ve heard of RottenTomatoes.com.  Long since a solid barometer for what critics are saying about a particular movie, RT has been mentioned as a “make-or-break” factor in the performance of many films.

The reviews are starting to trickle in.

Check out G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and see what the consensus is.  (Currently 80% with only 10 critics reporting.)

This article hit the AP Newswire this morning:

No go: Paramount won’t show critics ‘G.I. Joe’

By Associated Press |   Tuesday, August 4, 2009

LOS ANGELES – It’s the biggest movie of the summer that practically no one has seen.

“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” opens Friday, but Paramount Pictures isn’t screening the blockbuster for critics beforehand. Only a select few writers from blogs and movie Web sites have seen it for review – such as Harry Knowles, the self-professed “Head Geek” from Ain’t It Cool News – and their opinions have been mostly positive.

Instead, the studio says it’s intentionally aiming the movie at the heartland, at cities and audiences outside the entertainment vortexes of New York and Los Angeles. Paramount held a screening Friday for 1,000 military service members and their families at Andrews Air Force Base; it’s also focusing marketing efforts in places like Kansas City, Charlotte, N.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

While appealing to a sense of patriotism nationwide, the plan also is inspired by the disparity that existed between the critical trashing “Transformers: Rise of the Fallen” received and the massive crowds it drew at the box office. Continue reading →