Channing Tatum Rejected ‘GI Joe’ Seven Times And Hates It So Much He Begged To Be Killed In Sequel

That Channing Tatum hates ‘GI Joe’ is no secret, as in 2015 the actor explained that he was forced to participate in the sequel, ‘GI Joe: Revenge’, because I had a contract for three films, but now that he’s promoting ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ and has given an extensive interview to Vanity Fair, he was keen to insist that he didn’t even want to do the former.

“I rejected the first seven times”, Tatum account subjected to a lie detector, “[…] So also the second one, of course, I didn’t want to do it.” The actor insisted they kill him in the first 10 minutes of the next installment to avoid future commitments with the franchise and when asked if he has come to regret it, he replies with a resounding and decisive “Not”.

Released in 2009 with the original title “GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra”, that film stars Tatum, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Quaid and Sienna Miller, and although it has terrible reviews, grossed over $300 million at the worldwide box office. For ‘La Venganza’, which arrived in 2013, it was Dwayne Johnson who took the lead and its director, Jon M. Chu, also hired Adrianne Palicki, Jonathan Pryce, Bruce Willis, Ray Park, Ray Stevenson and Élodie Yung among the other. Which repeated the success and went on to make $375 million worldwide.

If it’s bad, it’s bad

“Look, I’ll be honest. I hate that movie. I hate that movie”Tatum previously said of the first ‘GI Joe’. “They pushed me to do it. When I did “Coach Carter,” I signed a three-picture deal… They give you the contract and say, “Three movie offer, that’s it.” And how [actor] young, you think, “Oh my God, that looks great, I’ll take it!” Time passes and you get other jobs and quotes and you have a dream job you want to do. And… the studio calls you and says, “Hey, we’ve got a movie for you, we’ll send it to you.” And they send it to you, and it’s ‘GI Joe’.”

Of course, the problem isn’t with ‘GI Joe’ in general as a product, just those movies. The original concept includes many lines of military dolls that were initially intended to compete with Barbie, comics, animated series and even video games, as well as these feature films of course: “The script wasn’t good at all… And I didn’t want to do something that… I was a fan of as a kid and watched it every morning growing up. I didn’t want to do something that was bad at first, and then I didn’t know if I wanted to be ‘GI Joe’.”

Although an attempt was made to continue the saga in 2020 with a “GI Joe 3”, it eventually became a spin-off, “Snake Eyes: The Origin”, starring Henry Golding and in which Úrsula Corberó also participates. Unlike its predecessors, ‘Snake Eyes’ was a huge commercial flop, earning just $40 million worldwide on a budget of around $88 million.