If next year’s reboot Snake Eyes ends up bombing at the box office, and there’s every chance that it will seeing as it’s a spinoff focusing on a supporting character in a franchise that’s struggled to remain relevant, then Paramount should probably give up on the idea of making G.I. Joe movies.
Stephen Sommers’ The Rise of Cobra is entertaining if only for the fact that it plays exactly like a live-action version of Team America but isn’t in on the joke, while follow-up Retaliation was marginally better for making the wise to decision to both hire Dwayne Johnson and allow director Jon M. Chu to have a little fun with the premise, but it was veteran Jonathan Pryce that ultimately ended up walking away with the movie by stealing every scene he was in.
More recently, a third installment with the bizarre subtitle of Ever Vigilant has stagnated in development hell since D.J. Caruso signed on to step behind the camera in 2017, with reports making the rounds that it probably won’t end up happening as the studio focus on either another reboot or the long-rumored Transformers crossover. And while we’re still waiting for some official updates on that front, insider Daniel Richtman has now claimed that the third movie, whether it ends up being a fresh start or a sequel to Retaliation, is looking to cast Tom Holland and John Cena in major roles.
Cena is the sort of actor you can immediately picture joining the G.I. Joe series, but even though he’s surprised a lot of people with his work in The Devil All the Time, you can’t really imagine Holland suiting up to join an elite military unit with codenames like Ripcord, Heavy Duty and Roadblock. Clearly, though, Paramount are hoping that the third and fourth attempts at launching a franchise fare much better than the first two and it’ll be fascinating to see what they ultimately come up with.
