- It’s not a good sign when a movie gets delayed. It’s really not a good sign when the cover story is a conversion to 3D. It’s really, really not a good sign when a movie gets delayed about a month before its release after a year of marketing, including a Super Bowl ad, which I’m told can be marginally expensive. G.I. Joe: Retaliation has become G.I. Joe: Retreat, as the movie moved to March 29, 2013 from June 29 of this year. The marketing has been shockingly well received, and excitement had reached the apex of what is possible for a sequel to a bad adaptation of a cartoon with a homoerotic character named Shipwreck. Don’t worry though, Seth McFarlane’s dirty teddy bear movie with Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, Ted, has seized the opportunity to slide into the vacancy. We lose The Rock, but we gain an f-bomb dropping stuffed animal. I don’t know the exchange rate, but this seems fair.
- Gary Oldman will go from Batmania to Robocopulation, as the manic master has brought his talents to the remake of the cyborg cop movie. Although the assumption was initially that he would play the villain, because he’s Gary Oldman, but he’s actually going to play a new character: the scientist who built Robocop. For the sake of making the boring retread interesting, I hope he’s the kind of scientist prone to psychotic episodes.
- Lee Daniels, the director of Precious, may have his follow-up, The Paperboy, set for release, but it’s the developing cast of The Butler that sounds fascinating. Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Nicole Kidman, Alan Rickman, Jane Fonda, Lenny Kravitz and John Cusack will now be joined by Matthew McConaughey as JFK and Minka Kelly as Jackie Kennedy. If Daniels wanted my interest, he could have saved some money and just hired that last name.
Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on Movieha!, a weekly half-hour movie podcast (movieha.libsyn.com/rss), catch him on the radio on CD 105.9 (cd1059.com) on Fridays at around 7:30 a.m. and on KVNO 90.7 (KVNO.org) at 8:30 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).