G.I. Joe: Retaliation producer clarifies if they upped the Channing Tatum scenes with those 3D reshoots

When G.I. JOE: RETALIATION pushed from June 29th last year to March of this year, many were left scratching their heads as to the motivation. The theories came down to 3 possibilities: it was a shitty movie, they needed to convert to 3D, and they wanted to incorporate more Channing Tatum. Tatum had a breakout year in 2012 which made for that to be one of the most popular hypotheses behind the push.

G.I. JOE: RETALIATION producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura was recently interviewed by Crave Online regarding the Tatum Theory and gave a pretty definite answer:

“I don’t know where that started. Literally, Channing shot for – if I have it wrong, I’m off by an hour – four hours, five hours? So it wasn’t really about that at all.”

Of course we are free to cry bullshit on this, especially since the posters and trailers now feature a little more focus on Tatum. That could be the marketing department angling to show as much of the MAGIC MIKE star as they can or it could be a sign he filmed for more than a few hours.

Either way, I have lowered my expectations for G.I. JOE: RETALIATION. Last year, I was psyched to check out the movie based on the trailers. Despite slightly reworked promotional material, I have been hesitant that something is wrong with the final product based on the delays. It still seems very odd for such a hugely marketed studio tentpole to be postponed simply for 3D conversion. Something stinks here and we will all find out what is rotten when the movie finally opens on March 29, 2013.