There was a time when Channing Tatum was just "that kid" in "Coach Carter," but four years later, he would be headlining a major franchise with "G.I. Joe: Rise Of The Cobra." However, while promoting "Magic Mike XXL" on "The Howard Stern Show" this morning, the actor revealed his true feelings about the end result and his mixed feelings about signing up in the first place.
“I fucking hate that movie,” he candidly said of "G.I. Joe: Rise Of The Cobra," which certainly explains why he was killed off in "G.I. Joe: Retaliation." Tatum said that, following the success of the inspirational Samuel L. Jackson movie, big deals started coming his way, and it was too good an opportunity to resist. “I was pushed into doing that movie…they give you the contract and and they go, ‘Three-picture deal, here you go.’ You’re like, ‘Oh my God, that sounds amazing, I’m doing that!’ Even the options go from like 60 grand to 80 grand to 100 grand, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so much money.’ "
"Time goes by, you get other jobs and you’re building your quote and you have a dream job that you want to go do, and the studio calls," he continued. "They’re like, ‘Hey, we’ve got a movie for you, we’re going to send it to you.’ It’s right during the writers’ strike and it’s G.I. Joe and I’m like, ‘I love G.I. Joe, can I play Snake Eyes?’ and they’re like, “No. You’re playing Duke.’ "
And from there, the situation went downhill. “The script wasn’t any good…and I didn’t want to do something that I thought was bad, and I didn’t know if I wanted to be G.I. Joe.”
Well, he wound up in the movie anyway and he still seems dismayed that the credit will forever haunt his IMDB page.
Meanwhile, Tatum has also been linked in recent months with a different "Ghostbusters" reboot at Sony, but it seems he’s cooling on the idea. “That thing’s gotten messy. I gotta be honest, there’s a lot of people doing a lot of things on ‘Ghostbusters,’” he said, adding: "There’s a lot of people in the ‘Ghostbusters’ pool."
His overall tone seems cautious, and while he admits he would "love" to do it, Tatum also says the entire effort is in a "gestation period." If his comments about ‘G.I. Joe’ are any indication, Tatum wants to do it right or not at all, and suggestion from this interview is that he wants to wait to see who stays or leaves the pool before figuring out if he’s gonna swim. [via The Wrap]
