Bruce Willis Puts The Joe In G.I. Joe

Hollywood Reporter is....reporting that Bruce Willis has entered negotiations to play General Joe Colton, aka the original Joe in the upcoming G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation.  Willis is just one of many changes you can expect for this next go 'round, with the additions of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Ray Stevensen, Adrianne Palicki and RZA.  Also new to the scene will be director Jon Chu, fresh off the success of the Justin Bieber documentary Never Say Never.

Channing Tatum and Ray Park will be among the very few returning faces from the series first entry.  Sadly for us, Joseph Gordon-Levitt will not be returning, which is a shame because we only got a few minutes of his excellent Cobra Commander at the close of the first film.  He's really the only character I'd be interested in revisiting anyway, so I'm not really torn up to see most of the major players left by the wayside.  If anything, I'd have liked to see them replace the wooden Channing Tatum, who's clearly incapable of carrying a movie, let alone an entire franchise.

I certainly won't miss Stephen Sommers, a director whose work has best been described as the type of movies a nine year old would make after spending the day eating Cap'n Crunch and watching Saturday morning cartoons.*  The real question mark here is Jon Chu, who's never really helmed a project of this scope or even genre.  Paramount has put a lot of faith in Chu and I'm curious to see if that faith pays off.  So far his casting has been pretty spot on (RZA as a kung fu expert named Blind Master?  Yes please!) and the addition of Willis, if it actually happens, looks like a step in the right direction.

*I wish I could take credit for this, but sadly this is all Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News.