Go, Joe!

This week, Paramount Pictures announced they were pulling G.I. JOE 2 from the summer schedule, and instead will release it in March of next year.  They're doing it, say they, to convert it to 3-D so they can make a lot more overseas, where people are apparently not yet sick of the phenomenon.

But now the conspiracy theories are flying.  Some say Paramount did it because they saw how poorly BATTLESHIP did (also an action movie based on a Hasbro property).  Some say they did it because AMAZING SPIDER-MAN comes out a week later, and they figured they'd compete better in the springtime than the jam-packed summer season.  Some say that test screenings went so poorly, they need time to fix it.  Some say love, it is a river, and you, its only shore.

There may actually be truth to the negative screenings rumor, since they're apparently going to do reshoots between now and the new release date.  And one dude claimed that they were doing what was done with the G.I.JOE movie in the Eighties (where they killed Duke, and then decided it decided it would upset children like in the Transformers movie, and rewrote it so he lived), and are making it so Channing Tatum gets to survive and be in more of the movie.  After all, he's pretty hot right now (even if his last movie's leading lady was Jonah Hill).

I don't know who to side with.  In a world with the Michael Bay "Unrecognizable Shaky-cam Robots" franchise, it surprises me that a studio would even care whether their movie is bad or not, since it's a franchise film, and all they care about is the opening weekend take anyway.  Genre films and sequels tend to open without screenings for critics, because they know the target audience won't read the reviews before going, and like we've noticed more and more often lately (even though the theatrical market share gets smaller and smaller), they don't give a crap if you liked the movie or not, as long as they got your money.

The funny thing is, with the loss of toy sales, and whatever the 3-D conversion and reshoots do to the budget, C.G.I.JOE: RETALIATION will have to make even more money next year than it would have this year.

Rish "Lady Jaye" Outfield

P.S. All this for a movie I wasn't even planning to see.