UPDATE (10:55 AM PST): According to the good people at CHUD.com via Latino Review as George “El Guapo” Rush posted the following:
We spoke with Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura about this whole firing mess and here’s what he had to say:
Lorenzo: Its very unfair to Steve, its completely untrue he was never asked to leave or been fired or any of that. That’s ridiculous. The movie tested very well.
I hear it tested as good as the first Transformers.
Lorenzo: Well listen, we tested very well and I don’t compare the movies because they are different movies, but you know I think its really destructive for a director…It hurts a guy’s career when people go around talking about that he was fired or he didn’t do a good job and truth is he did a really good job. People are going to enjoy the movie and the test audiences enjoyed the movie.
- He did a very good job the movie tested well and it couldn’t be more false that the studio in anyway did anything negatively to Steve.
So what really happened in the editing room?
- Lorenzo: Nothing that doesn’t happen on every other movie, which is that you constantly work and work and work and you make it better and better. We had a delay on visual effects so we waited a long time to finish the movie but that’s the only thing. I don’t really know why that would be interpreting it negatively but I guess it was.
In regards to the testing the film has had so far:
- Lorenzo: Everybody was happy, the studio was happy, the filmmakers were happy, the audience was happy with the movie. We had three test screenings, three different times and tested it and each time it just got better and better. We started off in a good place and we ende
d up in even in a better place, which is what you hope on a film from testing it.
So there you go. Straight from Lorenzo as he debunks the firing story. Like I said, I’ve heard from my sources that the film was tracking well. We’ve stuck up for this film from the get go. Why? Because we’re fans of G.I. Joe. And I’ve mentioned on Twitter and here numerous times that I think the movie looks kick ass. All know is fans want a good G.I. Joe movie despite the Hollywood politics. We’ll find out when it hits theaters on August 7th.
So there you have it. Sommers is still attached to G.I. Joe and Kyle Broflovski still gets hemorrhoids. It looks like it’s still set for August 7th but you can’t help but wonder if this is just a clean-up job to prevent bad press for a film that doesn’t have the best buzz. We’ll find out come August.
I noticed that the studio had been pushing the movie 2 months before the release with tons of commercials during the NBA Finals and NASCAR on TNT. The concept was there but they are trying too much to do the Matrix meets Transformers with G.I. Joe character names. Acceleration suits? Really? G.I.Joe was a special forces group consisting of the top people in each field of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, National Guard, and Coast Guard.
As a fan that grew up with G.I.Joe it is a shame that this product could be a great franchise that will be destroyed before it even gets off the ground. As for the character “Action Man,” there was an animated series at one time and the character was later brought into G.I.Joe by Hasbro Toys. In Europe the G.I.Joe comic was called Action Force and I think the Action Man character may have been published by Marvel Comics in Europe under the Action Force title when G.I.Joe ended.
Bottom line is that this movie was a victim of the writer’s strike and when the strike ended, they should have pushed the release back to allow for re-shoots and re-writes (same thing J.J. Abrams did for Star Trek).