Henry Golding
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Henry Golding will get his ninja on in the Paramount ‘G.I. Joe’ spin-off movie ‘Snake Eyes’ featuring the origin of the mysterious masked warrior.  Snake Eyes is a lethal assassin who, during an early mission with the Joe team, was horribly disfigured and lost the ability to speak after a helicopter explosion, resulting in him covering his face with his iconic black mask.  Ray Park portrayed the character in 2009’s ‘G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’, and its sequel, 2013’s ‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’.

Lorenzo DiBonaventura will produce the new picture, with a screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos, to be directed by Robert Schwentke.

Golding made a splash last year with this film debut in ‘Crazy Rich Asians’.  He followed that up with the comedic thriller ‘A Simple Favor’ and the action movie ‘Monsoon’.  He returns to romantic-comedy this winter in ‘Last Christmas”, co-starring Emilia Clarke.

Although most details about Snake Eyes’ past is “Classified,” including his real name, it is known that he and Storm Shadow were raised by the Arashikage ninja clan.  The boys were considered brothers until Storm Shadow’s uncle and the leader of the Arashikage, the Hard Master, was assassinated.  Although Snake Eyes ended up on the G.I. Joe team, Storm Shadow joined their enemies Cobra.  Byung-Hun Lee played Storm Shadow in the movies.

In the documentary series ‘The Toys That Made Us’, it was revealed that the Snake Eyes action figure was the result of cost-cutting.  Rather than simplify each action figure to come in under a certain price point, it was decided that one figure– Snake Eyes– would be released using almost all repeated body parts from the other toys, except his head, and that the figure would not be painted.  The result was the mysterious all-black toy that quickly became the line’s most popular.

Paramount’s ‘G.I. Joe’ movies followed the enormous success of Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers’ movies, but without the giant robots, the ‘Joe’ movies were not well-received and both underperformed at the box office.  Despite that, the studio has been planning to revisit the franchise again on the big screen.  A third team movie, ‘G.I. Joe: Ever Vigilant’ seems to have been shelved in order to reboot the franchise with ‘Snake Eyes’ and another possible movie featuring the character Chuckles.

‘Snake Eyes’ already has a release date of October 16, 2020.  Check back for updates to see if it can make that date.

 

Source: The Hollywood Reporter