G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra star Channing Tatum recently has been vocal about his opinion of the movie. He revealed that though he did not want to play in the movie he was forced to star in it. Tatum tried to avoid playing the role a multiple number of times. According to Variety, while taking a lie detector test in Vanity Fair, he revealed that he tried to not play in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra about 7 times only to fail.
Channing Tatum Hated His Own Movie
Channing Tatum was assigned a three-picture deal with the studio of G.I. Joe and at first before he started shooting for the movie he was hyped that he could star in three movies that he grew up watching as he was a fan. He stated, his reactions were something like “Oh my god, that sounds amazing, I’m doing that!”, absolutely amazed.
Upon reaching the set he was informed that he was going to play the role of a G.I. Joe, and he was completely devastated. He wanted to play the role of Snake Eyes as he was Tatum’s childhood favorite character. He further added that the script was not good, and he did not want to ruin his favorite childhood show that was bad, and also he didn’t want to play G.I. Joe.
Tatum previously said, “Look, I’ll be honest. I f–king hate that movie. I hate that movie”, though he tried to remove himself from the role 7 times, he had to play as it was previously contracted. He also requested the franchise at that time to kill off his character at the start of the movie but was rejected. When Tatum asked them if he could avoid the role, his request was rejected and they also said that if he didn’t play in the movie, he would be sued for breach of contract.
Channing Tatum and Jeremy Renner Wanted to Leave Their Roles
Channing Tatum wanted to leave his role behind in the G.I. Joe movies because growing up his favorite show was watching Snake Eyes and the G.I. Joe shows. As he did not get to play the character he wanted and instead had to play the G.I. Joe’s role, he was upset about it and wanted to end his role after 10 minutes into the movie. The Rise of Cobra did not earn many positive reviews and just grossed over $300 million worldwide. The sequel movie, Retaliation also did not do well at the box office as it gathered $375 million only $75 million more which some say was because of Dwayne Johnson.
Hawkeye actor Jeremy Renner also wanted to retire from his role in the MCU. Renner gave Marvel Studios a pretty serious ultimatum when his first child, his daughter, Ava Berlin Renner was born. As he wanted to spend time with his daughter as you only get to do it once, he didn’t want to miss out. This caused some problems with his role because, at that time, Marvel Studios was booming and was just beginning to start its massive domination in the industry. So Renner and people from Marvel Studios had to negotiate and sort things out. Disney ultimately gave in to his requests, Renner in an interview said,
“It taught me how to have the n*ts to say, ‘Everyone, f*ck off. It’s my time with my daughter.’ I said, ‘Fine, recast me. I’m going to be here with my daughter.’ It was pretty gnarly.”
So though Channing Tatum and Jeremy Renner both wanted to leave their role, they ultimately did their parts in their respective movies. Channing Tatum had to stay because he was contracted for three movies and he had done only two and was forced by law whereas Renner wanted to spend time with his daughter and came to an agreement with Disney and Marvel Studios.
Source: Variety
