After the disappointing box office for his latest music documentary Justin Bieber’s Believe, director Jon M. Chu is now gearing up for a return to the G.I. Joe franchise with a sequel to last year’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Speaking to Collider (via CBM) to promote the release of Believe, Chu has offered up some details on the Joes’ next big screen, as well as explaining the reasons for dropping out of another cult 80s toy adaptation, Masters of the Universe.
“I think we’re going to shoot this coming year,” said Chu on the status of the as-yet untitled G.I. Joe 3. We’ve been designing a bunch of stuff. I don’t know if I’m fully allowed to say when or how we’re gonna do it, but we’re in the middle of designing and creating the world right now, and writing the script. It’s going to be quite the adventure. It’s definitely not about making it bigger ‘cause we went pretty big last time and it didn’t necessarily make it better… I think it’s more about being creative with it and giving the audience something different and new. We’ve had two G.I. Joes now, in two very different ways, and we have to take the lessons that we learned with those two to try to make the best Joe possible. I love G.I. Joe because it’s about heroes. It’s very classic storytelling. There are villains and there are heroes, and there are human beings in the middle of it all, and they have to make choices about their life to become the hero. They have to sacrifice, they have to risk themselves, and they’re fighting for something. I love that it has classic storytelling. I always try to bring that back and try to make it simpler. It doesn’t have to be big, but you have to have more creative fighting and simpler storytelling, so you can enjoy it.”
And as for Masters of the Universe, Chu went on to reveal that the schedule for G.I. Joe 3 is the reason for his departure from the long-gestating He-Man adaptation: “It was timing. We did so much for Masters, and the script is awesome. I love that project. I would have loved to do it. The problem with Joe is that we have a specific timeline and I need to be on that timeline. Masters wasn’t ready to go, at that moment. And I have a loyalty to G.I. Joe. I don’t feel like I’ve fulfilled the promise I gave, to bring everything I love about Joe to the script. I feel like we did a lot of foundational stuff. We cleared the way. We brought the movie back to life, but at the same time, there’s so much more to do, to make it even better. I learned a lot on the last one, and I want to put that into practice and make this one even better, and make it have life for many, many movies in the future, whether I’m doing them or not.”
Are you looking forward to another G.I. Joe movie from Chu, and who would you like to see taking on the Masters of the Universe movie? Let us know in the comments below….
Originally published January 2, 2014. Updated December 13, 2019.
