G.I. JOE RETALIATION has been sent to March 2013..why?

Gah!!!!

My day was going pretty good.  Work didn’t suck, and hey, it’s new comic day.  Then I open up Twitter and read this:

“G.I. Joe: Retaliation’ Moved To March 2013 For 3D Conversion”

FUCK!

Seriously, I thought this was some made up news for someone that was trolling.  But no,  According to Deadline it’s legit.  Yes, Paramount upped and moved a movie, one that’s just shy of a month away from release, and knocked it back 9 GODDAMN MONTHS to March.  The excuse:  To convert the film to 3D.

What a load of horse crap!

No one is out right saying it, but there are two reasons for this right now.  The first is Battleship.  Yes, Hasbro and Universals attempt to turn a board game into a blockbuster film.  That attempt (while fun and stupid) blew up in their face in a bad way.  Battleship did well overseas, but I think that Universal and Hasbro severely underestimated the drawing power of a little film called The Avengers.  Which brings me to point two.  THE AVENGERS.  The fear of the comic book film is a stern reality now.  In a summer filled with no less than three of them, G.I. Joe would have had to contend with The Amazing Spider-Man less than a week after it’s release.  Not to mention that The Dark Knight Rises is two weeks after that.  Anything that’s the meat between those tow massive slices of bread was sure to be squashed.

So Paramount got scared.  Scared that a film that they’ve been hyping for months now, one that’s had copious amounts of advertising done, and  positive buzz was going to tank.  So instead of pushing it back to August where it originally was, they decided to add 3D to it and bump bit back almost a whole damn year.  The last film that happened to was Cabin in the Woods.  And look what happened there.  (It was a great movie by the way)

Now we have to wait and listen to Paramount‘s excuses as to why they’re pulling this stunt:

“We’re going to do a conscientious 3D job because we’ve seen how it can better box office internationally,” one of the studio execs just told me. “Jim Cameron did all of Titanic‘s 3D in post — and look how well that movie turned out.”

They’re citing Titanic as one of the main reasons for doing this.  Titanic was going to make money either way.  It was the number one film of all time for almost ten years.  Of course it made money on it’s 3D re release!  G.I. Joe, as much as I’m losing geek cred saying this, ISN’T TITANIC!  Moving it to March, while a now viable month, probably isn’t going to pull the summer box office numbers.  Hunger Games did well because tons of teenage girls went to see it.  G.I. Joe isn’t going to do Hunger Game numbers.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that when I heard that Jon Chu was making this film, I lost a lot of enthusiasm.  Then that first trailer hit, and he FIXED everything from the first film, and looked to have made a real life G.I. Joe film that we’ve all been waiting for.

Now we have to wait 9 more damn months for it!  Goddamn it Paramount.

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