Even though the movie still hasn’t debuted in several major international markets, the chances of Snake Eyes getting a sequel are looking incredibly slim already. The latest attempt to turn G.I. Joe into a viable franchise hit domestic theaters two and a half weeks ago, and has already vanished almost entirely from the public consciousness.
A Rotten Tomatoes score of 38% isn’t great, but it’s still higher than Stephen Sommers’ The Rise of Cobra and Jon M. Chu’s Retaliation, which sums up the brand pretty neatly. Nobody seems to be asking for more G.I. Joe blockbusters, and they’ve all been greeted fairly tepidly from both a critical and commercial standpoint, but Paramount continue to keep trying regardless.
Having brought in just $33 million at the box office so far, Henry Golding’s first major leading role in the action genre had gone down like a lead balloon, and all signs point to the studio going back to the G.I. Joe drawing board once again. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura even revealed that he’d pitched the studio a sequel, only for his story outline to be rejected.
“It’s funny, there’s ten pages of one draft that got the tone exactly where I thought it should be. And I gave it to every director and every writer, and then they rejected it.”
The veteran producer’s idea saw one of the Joes being captured in South America, before being disavowed. Of course, their teammates don’t stand for this, leading to a small band of rogue operatives passing themselves off as civilians to head behind enemy lines in an effort to free their colleague. While that was knocked back by Paramount, di Bonaventura did confirm that a separate screenplay from Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse has been commissioned.
You have to admire his optimism, but now that Snake Eyes has seen the series go zero-for-three, a second installment feels more like wishful thinking than a realistic proposition.