GI JOE 3 Already In Development

Defying a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 29% (and that is rather generous in my opinion), GI Joe: Retaliation managed to rake in just over $132 million at the combined domestic and international box office. Needless to say that’s the kind of business that makes studio beancounters sit up and take notice. Given that this film is not only earning more its predecessor did opening weekend, it was also made for substantially less, another sequel seems inevitable.

And indeed it is as Variety is reporting that studio Paramount is already talking about starting development o a third GI Joe film. There is no further information as to who may be involved in the project, and as it is such early days, they might not have even had any discussions with anyone about it yet. But I wouldn’t be surprised if director Jon M. Chu is the first person they start talkng with. It remains to be seen whether he’ll take on the job immediately or see if he can get his in-development Masters Of The Universe movie in front of cameras first.

Although the first two installments of this franchise have failed to entertain me as a moviegoer, I do have to admit to a perverse interest in what this third film will look like. Retaliation has a plot point or two that really places further films into a tough corner to get out of. When we see the Joe team being taken out under the orders of Zartan-masquerading-as-the-President, the movie indicates, and certainly doesn’t go out of its way to state otherwise, that all Joe operations and bases were hit, wiping out the entire organization except for the few we see in the film. So that means that fan favorites seen in the first film like Scarlett, Ripcord, Heavy Duty, Breaker, Sgt. Stone and General Hawk are all dead, making their return to the franchise somewhat problematic. Granted, these were all off-screen deaths, so I suppose that maybe a few characters may have survived the attack and weren’t able to get back to the US in order to participate in the rest of Retaliation‘s action. But overall, if you try this with too many characters, it would strain credulity. But then again, this is the GI Joe franchise we’re talking about, so believability really is not much of a priority.