Stephen Sommers Talks "G.I. Joe"

According to Entertainment Weekly, Stephen Sommers will be making his upcoming movie, G.I. Joe, a throwback to a more older school of action-adventure movies. Sommers previously directed such movies as The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, and Van Helsing. Sommers has not actually directed a feature film since Van Helsing, which was released in 2004 to poor reviews, but decent box office, grossing $300 million worldwide. It was not enough, however, to turn the tentpole starring Hugh Jackman into a franchise, as Universal had hoped.

G.I. Joe is based on the Hasbro toy line of action figures of the same name. The toys which first appeared in the 1960s later experienced a resurgence in the 1980s with a new cartoon and ongoing Marvel comic series. G.I. Joe enjoyed significant popularity throughout the 1980s and '90s and hopes to do so again with the new live action movie from Paramount Pictures, much like the other popular Hasbro toy line, Transformers.

Sommers aims with the new movie to make it more of a throwback to the old school action movies rather than the more faster-paced, quick-cut, and hand-held photographed type of action films Hollywood currently pumps out. Sommers said, "I always loved the old Bonds. It's funny now how Bond wants to be Bourne. I loved Quantum of Solace, but it was like, man, this is a completely different movie to the Bonds I grew up with. . . . In a very contemporary way, G.I. Joe is inspired by the memory of the kind of movies I saw when I was younger. . . . I remember being in the theater for Thunderball and the big underwater battle at the end of that movie just blew my socks off. In G.I. Joe, there's an underwater battle under the polar icecap that's Thunderball times 10!"

G.I. Joe is due out for a theatrical release August 7, 2009.