Corona | Coming Attractions

On its opening day G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra took in an estimated $22.3 million dollars. The film is showing on 4,007 screens, meaning that it took in an average of $5,500 per venue on Friday. That would mean that the movie is on track to have a $65 million dollar opening weekend.

Both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have stories today about Paramount not screening G.I. Joe to film critics nationwide. Reporter states that the studio is taking the strategy of showing the film to military personnel and their families in select venues as well as in America's heartland. "G.I. Joe is a big, fun, summer event movie -- one that we've seen audiences enjoy everywhere from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Phoenix, Ariz.," Paramount's Rob Moore is quoted as saying. "After the chasm we experienced with Transformers 2 between the response of audiences and critics, we chose to forgo opening-day print and broadcast reviews as a strategy to promote G.I. Joe. We want audiences to define this film."

During the Australian press junket for the film director Stephen Sommers was asked what the real story was behind the rumor that he was fired and locked out of the editing room. "It's complete lies. I have always had final cut of the film," Sommers is quoted by Movieline as saying. "People just make stuff up. You have to really screw up to get fired from a movie. The stigma of that would kill it. This is not the case."

Star Sienna Miller also related a story of an accident during filming where she was injured in an uncomfortable place. "Luckily it wasn’t my breasts, it was the bit in-between," Miller explained. "It got a bit burnt when an explosion got a bit close."

Screenings of The Rise of Cobra are now taking place for members of the press so we're bumping up the development phase of this movie to "completed" level.

UGO received a box from Hasbro containing an assortment of toy tie-ins from the G.I. Joe movie. One of the action figures was that of the movie's Destro -- and it's after he's put on his metal mask. The site scanned in the toy's artwork and wants to show it to you.

Slashfilm found the Japanese movie trailer for G.I. Joe on YouTube and it has a moment where we can see Cobra Commander standing alongside Destro. Virtually all of the scenes in the J-trailer have been seen before in the domestic one but that oh-so brief reveal of C.C. is worthy of a watch. Keep your eyes peeled for the Commander near the beginning of the trailer below:

Film School Rejects debuted the new one-sheet poster featuring Shana "Scarlett" O'Hara, G.I. Joe's favorite redheaded soldier (and Cobra's favorite redheaded adversary.)

In a video interview with Collider, G.I. Joe producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura states that the movie is 1 hour, 47 minutes long. Make your babysitter plans accordingly.

An extended TV promotional spot for the movie was uploaded to YouTube and can be watched here.

Paramount has also released four new character posters exclusive to four different movie websites. Feast your eyes on Duke, Storm Shadow, The Baroness and Ripcord.

Was Stephen Sommers fired as the director of G.I. Joe at some point recently and then brought back? A disturbing post that appeared on producer Don Murphy's message forum (and which has now been deleted) said that Sommers has been fired from the production, "locked out of the editing room," and that editor-come-director Stuart Baird had been hired by Paramount to fix the film's problems in the editing booth. "Sommers was then forced by his William Morris agents to pretend that he was working on Tarzan over at Warner Brothers doing design work, even though that film doesn't even have a good script yet," wrote the message board poster. "When word of the firing started to be whispered about in Hollywood, Sommers was summoed back to the editing room- but only to save appearances, Baird is still editing the movie with studio input."

Latino Review's George "El Guapo" Roush contacted G.I. Joe producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and asked him about the rumor. Di Bonaventura shot it down and played down any talk that Sommers had been fired at any time from the project. "It's very unfair to Steve, it's completely untrue he was never asked to leave or been fired or any of that," said di Bonaventura. "That's ridiculous... it's hurts a guy's career when people go around talking about that he was fired or he didn't do a good job and truth is he did a really good job. People are going to enjoy the movie and the test audiences enjoyed the movie."

Was the message forum post a truthful leak from the inside or someone with an axe to grind against Sommers? We may never know the truth.

Now that the MTV Movie Awards have aired that full length clip from G.I. Joe can be watched.

As a build-up to what they promise will be a longer look at the film come this Sunday when the MTV Movie Awards are broadcast, MTV has a 45-second teaser video showing new stuff from the G.I. Joe movie. MTV's video player will only display the video for those in America so we've also embedded a YouTube video with the same content for our international readers to watch.

Empire debuted the international poster for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra today. Just so it's noted, this is the first official look at Destro and Cobra Commander wearing their masks.

The new trailer for G.I. Joe has hit on MySpace. We see more shots of the Eiffel Tower being dissolved by Destro's nano-terrorism which leads into the trailer's main focus, the creation of an elite fighting team to battle this kind of new threats. Then we see shots of most of the core members of the Joe team like Hawk, Duke, Scarlett, Ripcord and, of course, Snake Eyes.

The HISS Tank fansite continues to dominate in its coverage of the G.I. Joe movie by presenting to us some scans of the action figure packaging for the movie's version of Cobra Commander. That means not only do we get to see what the mask of Mr. C.C. looks like in its final form but there's also the obligatory character bio found on the backside of the blister pack. Here's what the bio reads, slight story spoilers below: