You can’t fault the enthusiasm of the Snake Eyes cast, who continue to talk up the potential of new adventures for their characters, despite the fact the latest attempt to turn G.I. Joe into a viable franchise is poised to end up as the biggest box office bomb of 2021.
Instead of the pandemic-era standard 45-day window between theatrical and streaming releases, Robert Schwentke’s prequel spinoff hit VOD just three and a half weeks after premiering on the big screen. Armed with a budget reported to be hovering around the $100 million mark, Snake Eyes limped to a disastrous $37 million globally.
It may have been the best-reviewed entry in the series to date, but a 37% Rotten Tomatoes score is hardly something to write home about, while Schwentke made the bizarre decision to hire a talented cast of martial artists for the intricate fight scenes, only to favor shaky cam to the point of making the set pieces largely incomprehensible.
Henry Golding and Andrew Koji have already voiced their desire to return for another round, and we can now add Haruka Abe to that list, after the actress admitted in an interview with ComicBook that she wants to explore Akiko’s backstory.
“I knew that she was this brand new character who is being introduced to the G.I. Joe universe through this film. And so that was very exciting because I got to create the character from scratch and she’s basically the Arashikage’s head of security, and her backstory isn’t really revealed in the film. And the fact that her backstory is a mystery really gave me that freedom to discuss things with Robert and get really creative and I had so much fun kind of coming up with her backstory with Robert and the team. And hopefully we’ll get to explore that in the future movies, but yeah, and she’s a very capable fighter.”
Unfortunately for Abe, that probably isn’t going to happen. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura revealed he’s already had a Snake Eyes sequel pitch rejected by Paramount, so it’s back to the drawing board one again for the Joes, who’ve now gone zero-for-three.