This is an interesting bit of news. Our friends over at IESB have dug up and very interesting bit of casting news with regards to the GI Joe movie currently in live action development. Most of us have known for a while that Mark Wahlberg is positioned to play the character “Duke”. Well, it looks like they could be looking at an Italian Job reunion, because of this:
One of our other GI Joe informants has sent over some additional top secret information in regards to the film. Yes, Mark Wahlberg is still the first choice to play Duke and we can add that Jason Statham is the first choice to bring the British Action Man character to life. While we have confirmed that Wahlberg has talked with producer di Bonaventura about the role of Duke, we don’t know how much, if any, talking has taken place with Statham.
Jason Statham in a GI Joe movie? Yeah, they way they describe it I could see it working just fine. Statham has evolved into one of my hands down favorite action stars. He’s built like a pro athlete, great personality, huge charm and very solid comedic timing to boot. Everything you need in an action star.
As far as the GI Joe movie itself goes… I still think in general it’s a bad idea. There is just no way to make this film work that will make people happy. Hasbro will want to target this film at kids to increase toy sales, which means no blood, no kills and no hardcore war action. Transformers had the advantage that you could show Megatron ripping another robot in half with his bare hands and it doesn’t matter cause their robots…. show a human being getting ripped in half and you’ve instantly got an NC-17 rating.
