'G.I. Joe' Director Denies He Was Fired for Sucking

Though for my money, the summer movie season ended with the release of Harry Potter, there are still a few non-megahits awaiting us. The biggest of those is G.I. Joe on August 7th. No more editorializing on that subject. I promise. Anyway, the film's director, Stephen Sommers, whose best movie is probably the first installment of the Mummy series and his worst is probably everything else, says he'd love to see a sequel to Joe immediately. But wait a second: Wasn't he fired a few months ago? Maybe you remember that flash in the pan story, in which a producer wrote on his personal blog that G.I. Joe was the worst-testing film in the history of Paramount and that the negative reaction led to Sommers' getting the axe, leaving the studio to finish the movie without him. Sommers is responding to those allegations, and laid it all out there in a chat with Cinefools:

"It was actually a surprise because I was in the editing room and I got a phone call from a friend checking if I had been fired and replaced, so I just kept editing. That's what's crazy about the internet because I have final cut and they couldn't throw me off if they wanted and clearly when you see the movie you'll realise how silly that was. Someone said, 'It was the worst testing movie in Paramount's history.' That's crap! When you see the movie you'll know it's false. It is discouraging though. If you took two seconds to look into it not only do I have final cut but as a director if I didn't have final cut, you'd have to really screw up a movie to get fired because once a director gets fired from a project the stigma attached to that movie...you're just dead."

I also doubt that it's the bottom of the barrel among Paramount movies. That studio made The Love Guru.

Comments

[J]

This bad boy looks like a big pile of suck.

[Asana]

Without Lady Jaye or Flint who could take this film at all seriously?

[mdamien13]

I'm personally holding out for District 9 before turning my back on the summer movie season, but since I was a GI Joe addict as a kid I'll have to see this movie even though I know it's going to be horrible. Hopefully it provides a few laughs in the "so bad it's good" category.

Oh, and I argue that Stephen Sommers's best movie was Dead Rising, then The Mummy. Everything else is shite, though.