Friday, February 01, 2008

Three more join the Joes

Three more key pieces of casting for the upcoming G.I. Joe film have fallen into place.

IESB reports that Arnold Vosloo has been cast as the chameleon-like leader of the Dreadnoks Zartan. Vosloo is familiar to director Stephen Sommers, and probably you too, as having played the dreaded mummy Imhotep, in The Mummy. While Zartan himself is supposed to be Australian, and looks nothing like what I remember Vosloo as from The Mummy, at elast we know he has the screen presence to carry the role.

As a side note IESB also absolutely confirms, that Channing Tatum has indeed been cast as Duke.

Next, IESB reports that veteran stage actor David Murray has been cast as the masked villain Destro. Although, he was obviously always the coolest of the bad guys in the cartoon, he usually played second fiddle to Cobra Commander. Reportedly The movie version of Destro will be a total badass though who ultimately is the big bad guy for at least this first, film. Whether Cobra Commander makes an appearance at all in the film has not been revealed. But my hope is that he will show up at the very end of the film, after the Joes kick Cobras ass, having been forged from the fires of battle to lead Cobra onto greater victory in the sequel... at least that's what I'm imagining.

Finally, as reported by Variety the actual official leader of the G.I. Joe program General Hawk has been cast. He, as all the Joes are, is a combat veteran but in the cartoon he rarely if ever actually went into battle. Hawk, along with General Flagg (for a number of years technically the other highest ranking officer) were the soldiers that had been forced into the more political roles of running the G.I. Joe program, whereas Duke is the tried and true field commander. This role has gone to none other than Dennis Quaid. A role, I can see him actually doing quite well with.

Interestingly and kind of quietly, these casting stories are now listing, at the bottom of the page in the obligatory already cast paragraph, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was announced to be 'in talks' before, as cast as the character Rex. and who is Rex you ask? I know I did.... its not anyone I remember. So I've just done a quick google search, and what should I find but this Latino Review script review from December of '05. Of course the film will have changed greatly since that draft back then, but just have a look at what they say on the matter. I won't spoil it here, and if true it is a rather BIG SPOILER, so link on at your own risk.

Anyhow, that pretty much rounds out the cast. Now I want to see a teaser trailer, or at least some artwork. Hopefully soon....

UPDATE - just saw that Latino Review has just today posted a spoilery review of the actual final shooting script.
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