Ray Stevenson has been busy lately playing all sorts of heroes, villains and rogues in movies like THOR, PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, THE BOOK OF ELI, THE OTHER GUYS and KILL THE IRISHMAN.
He’ll go back to the baddies as Cobra saboteur Firefly in G.I. JOE 2 (which may or may not carry a subtitle of COBRA STRIKES). The character is a mercenary and demolitions expert with ties to the ninja clan that produced Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.
Those two Arashikage rivals (played again by Ray Park and the awesome Byung-hun Lee) are coming back with hero Channing Tatum, but otherwise the sequel seems to be scrapping the entire original cast (no Rachel Nichols? BOOOOO) and sifting through the comics, cartoon and toy line for suitable replacements.
New director Jon M. Chu (STEP UP 2 & 3D, JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER) is also bringing in Dwayne Johnson as Roadblock, Adrianne Palicki as Lady Jaye, DJ Cotrona as Flint, Elodie Yung as Jinx, and The RZA as ninja mentor Blind Master. Still more Joes should be filling out the ranks soon.
And on the opposing side, we can probably expect some incarnation of Cobra Commander but so far we haven’t heard a peep about Baroness or Destro, so it will be interesting to see exactly how much of the first movie’s story flows into the sequel, due in August 2012.