Paramount Explains The Real Reasons Behind 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation' Delay

The following contains some spoilers about the movie at the time the movie was set to premiere. These spoilers may change in the final version.

Paramount Pictures gave the excuse for moving G.I. Joe: Retaliation from June 29th to March 29th, 2013 was for 3D reason. Try again Paramount... According to Deadline that even after Paramount threw tons of money into a Super Bowl commercial, TV and outdoor ads and warehouses full of toys. Paramount became 'extremely concerned about G.I. Joe 2‘s box office prospects worldwide after its test scores were mediocre to bad.'

Paramount explained to sources the reasoning behind the delay with G.I. Joe: Retaliation:

The start of the problems deals with Channing Tatum. Paramount saw major problems and knew they had to do something fast. They knew reshoots were needed and realized that killing off Channing Tatum was miscalculated and wrong to do so at the start of the film. Since shooting the first movie, Tatum has grown into a draw with his back-to-back successes in The Vow and 21 Jump Street. Audiences were also upset that they didn’t like the fact that Channing and The Rock really didn’t have any time to develop a friendship before Channing died. Even by looking at the movie poster, no one would know that Tatum is even in the movie. The other problem that Paramount had with the movie is that Tatum is appearing in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike as a stripper and the movie opens also in June.

In the United States, John Carter lost $200M despite the best efforts of the Pixar brain trust but by the 3D conversion of the movie. The 3D film managed to gross over $200M overseas, nearly tripling its U.S. take. Battleship sunk and only pulled in $60M-$70M U.S. and just over $200M international. This was the wake-up call that Paramount said that they needed to offer the best version of the film irrespective of summer market share to ensure the best possible performance. And not being in 3D will cost a ton of business internationally.

Sources have also indicated that G.I. Joe 2 director Jon M. Chu is "shellshocked" over the release date move since Paramount kept him on a very tight leash from the beginning of the production. We can hope that Paramount lets up a little and gives Chu some breathing room to do the reshoots and make this movie worth seeing.