UPDATED: G.I. Joe Retaliation release date pushed to 2013- How does this affect Hasbro?
Friday, May 25th, 2012 by Pixel Dan
UPDATE: Hasbro has finally made an official announcement concerning the status of the Retaliation toy line. TNI has the full press release.
“There is a limited amount of G.I. Joe Retaliation product at retail now, but in light of the movie moving out to March 29, 2013, the majority of the movie line will be made available early next year in time for the film’s release.”
Well, that’s pretty much exactly what I assumed would happen. You’ve got to think that this cannot be good for Hasbro. Retailers already seem to not like stocking G.I. Joe figures as it is. This can’t make G.I. joe look any better to those retailers who all assumed stocking this product would be ok since there is a movie to back it. And now, Hasbro has to wait almost a year without any new Joe product. Ouch.
If you are interested in any of the first wave stuff, I’d recommend grabbing it now if you see it. I have a feeling these will end up being the hard to find items come next year.
ORIGINAL POST: Out of nowhere, Paramount and Hasbro announced that they are pushing the release date of G.I. Joe Retaliation from June 2012 to March 2013 in order to convert the film to 3D. ToyNewsI.com has the full press release.
It’s crazy to think that after all of the promotion that has gone into this film Paramount thinks the best thing to do is push the release date almost 9 months just so the film can be in 3D. Is 3D really that important? Does it really affect sales? It seems to me that many people are over the 3D thing at this point. I’m sure most people would have been just fine with 2D.
But here’s my bigger question: How does this affect Hasbro and the release of the Retaliation toy line? These toys have already started hitting stores. They’re out there. Hasbro also put a lot of focus on this line of movie toys at New York Toy Fair in February.
Hasbro hasn’t made an official announcement about the toy line as of yet. I am very curious to see what kind of problems this may cause, if any. Will Hasbro pull the toys? Will they just not release any of the next waves until next year? Or will they just put it all out anyway even though the movie is now almost a year away?
It’ll be interesting to see what happens, that’s for sure.
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If I see this movie when it comes out I'm only going to pay for a 2D showing.
Ha! i said the same thing! I'd rather see it in 2D any way…
Kind of stupid IMO to pull a movie at 4 weeks from release. The money they want to make off 3D is cancelled out by the money they just blew marketing it the past few months. P.S. If it posts in all caps, then I'm sorry. while typing the caps wouldn't turn off.
That's exactly my thought. This is so bizzarre.
I think they might just release the figures. I would assume the stores have already commited to them at this point.
Can't help but wonder if this is some kind of over-reaction kinda decision based on battleship tanking so badly. Whatever the thought process behind the delay and 3dification, I wasn't super-excited for this one anyway, so I'll wait for march and see it in 2d.
also, The Rock is contracted to have a program at Wrestlemania next year which is right around the new release date. I know that isn't really a toy related point, but it means that we are either gonna lose the Rock for a few appearences while he is doing publicity, or we are gonna be bombarded with even more GI JOe promos up to mania.
What a waste. Every movie that is "converted" to 3D ends up looking like crap. I will continue to maintain my stance that this 3d stuff is just a passing fad and a way to take extra money from the consumer. I will not see a movie in 3d nor will I purchase a 3d Blu-Ray movie.
WTF?
That's it for now. I'm too busy ranting on Facebook and reading the Never Ending Thread on http://www.Hisstank.com.
Maybe they did not want to go up against Advenger left-overs, MIB 3, and Spider-man. Now all they have to look forward to Iron Man 3.
Yeah, I was wondering if Avengers scared Paramount a bit. Plus they are going up against Spider-Man and Dark Knight Rises this summer as well. It almost seems like Paramount just wanted to move away from this huge Summer so they could hopefully get more ticket sales in March where there would be less competition. *shrugs*
Here is the breakdown.
it's fueled by some executives really poor decision and possibly being scared off by amazing spider-man which opens I believe a week later. paramount wants to have a good three weeks of box office returns and spider-man scares them.
now that is just ole' devall's opinion.
people are speculating that the poor return from battleship's opening weekend has them wanting to push joe back to try and alleviate the pain of the 'bomb'.
the truth is that thanks to battleships' foreign sales seeing as the film has been out overseas since late april, that film has pulled in almost 300 million dollars and the foreign box office is still climbing. so seeing as we here in the states gave two poops about the film the foreign movie goers have been eating that film up like we did the avengers.
battleship will end up making money, even if it does worse here in the states. couple the dvd and blu-ray sales and it will make a ton of cash for paramount.
so that brings us back to retaliation. why decide to pull the film a month from it's release date after you have spent 40 to 70 million dollars in just advertising to raise the awareness for the film just to have to turn around and start it all over in january? this is one of those amazingly poor business decisions.
I can't seem to wrap my mind around this decision. warner bros. stalled the release of deathly hollows part 2 to post convert the film to 3-D, but that film wasn't a month from release.
I'll still see the film when they finally pop it onto the worlds lap in march of '13. no 3-D for sure.
But i said this earlier, i'll bet money someone attached to the film will leak this sucker and it will be the most pirated film since wolverine.
The pirate thing was my first thought concerning a delay of 9 months. Very risky for the studio.
And hey, if that happens, there's a good chance it'll be completely different than the movie we get in March, according to all of the reports about the reshoots that are happening.
I imagine the reshoots are mostly to blame for the delay too. I don't care about 3D at all lol. I was anticipating this film soon. Hopefully the delay will improve it, but who knows.
I imagine this push back had something to do with the ultimate box office receipts and the overall quality of the film. I think if the delay can help the film be better and more enjoyable, then it’s the right decision. A weird decision, but perhaps the right one…
What? This is kinda sucky, I know my GF said this one looked bad-ass compared to the 1st movie and she openly said she'd like to see this one in the theater. We generally never see movies in 3-D due to the price, it's more within our budget to see it in 2-D. I can't remember the last time a movie was delayed THIS far back. Well, if the world ends in December I guess we'll never get to see this movie. :-/
This is just lame, I was really starting to look forward to this movie and I hate 3D post production crap.
The 3D post-production aspect of this whole thing still seems odd to me. I just don't feel like they'd really earn that much more having the film in 3D. At least, not enough to counter the cost of the 3D conversion and all of the advertising they've already done that is now pointless.
I'm still hoping to hear something official about the fate of the toyline. Jay C from TNI posted on Twitter that e-tailers were told they could sell the current Wave 1 stock that they have, but that it is undetermined if they'll have anything to sell beyond that. So Hasbro may be pulling these figures and holding them until next year after all…
I guess we'll see. Hopefully we get official word soon.
Stupid move…. unless they got scared of the chance of other potentially high grossing Summer movies taking away from the revenues.
I bet history will repeat itself: "Duke has fallen into a coma" … and comes back right in time for the finale through the magic of reshoots, haha!
LOL! That would be hilarious!!
That would be funny, but I still don't like Duke
However, there are thousands of stories to be told with a living character. Not too many you can pull out for a dead one.
I doubt they really killed him off, anyway, though. I think that that was a rumor, or at least, if true, that they did it in an ambiguous way. If there's no body…
(… and hell, any Joe comics fan knows that in the case of Cobra Commander, we HAD a body, and he still came back, lol)
Post updated with infor from Hasbro. Discuss!
You know, the funny thing about this is that the director offered to shoot it in 3D (with 3D cameras) when he took the job, but Paramount chickened out because of cost. Now we've got crappy post-conversion (and I don't care about 3D, anyway), millions spent on promoting a movie that is now coming out 9 months later, and a bunch of essentially useless product (in retailer's eyes).
Barely anyone around where I live stocks a decent amount of Joes anyway, and now they pull this? I can only imagine how the retailers feel about this (especially since they've been sitting on the product for at least a month in many cases).
I haven't seen any of these yet, but I hope to at least pick up a SE, SS, CC, and Zartan.
In short: Bah!
Yep, that's my biggest fear. We don't need the retailers to have any more of a negative look on GI Joe. It makes me worry about the future of the line in stores.
But, if the movie still does well in March, and still sells lots of toys, there may be nothing to fear. Time will tell.
We'll just have to see. From what I had originally heard, the test screenings went well. Now everyone says that it tested badly. I think that's just a reaction to the news of re-shoots, but I truly think that the re-shoots are just additional material to enhance the 3D, as the Rock stated, since Jon Chu wanted to do it right the first time, anyway. i guess this is second best.
As far as the toys, yeah. All of the waves this last year or so have been hard to find around here. I've never once seen a Renegades SS or Zombie Viper, or even the rest of that wave.
I hope the movie is a success, partly because I just want a good movie, but also because I want the toys to do well. We've been getting some of the best figures in the line this last year, but you can't find them.
I hope that hasbro scrambles something together in the meantime, like maybe bringing the Dollar General figures to bigger stores, or just following the DG figures formula. They may be a mish-mash of parts and essentially re-paints, but they are pretty good figures. The DG figures I have have the tightest joints I've gotten on a Joe in years, and they seem just as sturdy as the regular figs.
I just want to see SOMETHING on the pegs for the rest of the year. Even if it's just strategic parts re-use/repaints like the DG figures. As long as they are of good quality, I will be happy.
I want a Cobra Comander.
With the exception of the minimal articulation, he's a pretty cool figure. There's a blue one and a black one out there. I prefer the blue, personally, but I'd like to track down the black one as well.
I at least hope to find a blue one. I need some time off recording to go to the major stores! Are they at Springfield IL Walarts or targets?
Wallmarts lol sorry, late and buzzed
Walmart, one L haha
3D is nothing more than a big hype. Example: I looked "The Avengers" only in 3D cause there was no 2D version in german cinemas. the ticketprice goes higher. you pay more for 3D, thats all. at home I don't need this F***ing 3D. And it is more than a mess to cancel a movie release about 9 months later only for 3D tuning… Now I wait from the beginning to the Blu Ray Release for G.I. Joe Retaliation. Never go again for this 3D hype in cinemas!
This is just too bizarre that a big company like hasbro would allow anyone to do this to one of their franchises .especially when what we have seen so far. Seemed ready to restore the line to prominence.(or at least repair the damage the first film did)g.I.Joe as a whole seems to have been on a downward spiral since 2009 Afterthey cancelled the 25th anniversary Line and flooded the market with al that plain looking movie garbage.the convention this year is gonna be pretty interesting and awkward. A horrible way to let paramount treat the line which put hasbro on the map.
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Supposedly Hasbro is asking retailers to send back their Retaliation figures.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118054684
I ordered a Storm Shadow off of Amazon the other day. I wonder if my order will be cancelled before it ships?
Yeah, I started seeing those reports over the weekend. Apparently even Dollar General stores we asked to send back their exclusive figures that have nothing to do with the movie, which is going to make those even harder to find!
Hopefully Amazon still sends your Storm Shadow! Let me know if they cancel it on you!
It shipped today (I bought one at Walmart, so it may get sent back, anyway. Or custom fodder… I haven't decided yet).
There are figures in my area at at least Target and Walmart. A friend of mine told me that an employee at one of them (I can't remember which) was aware of Hasbro wanting them back, but basically said, "no way, I've already set the whole thing."
It looks like a lot of stores have followed suit, but with no re-orders likely, it's definitely best for people to get what they want when they see it.
I hadn't heard about the DG figures going back. That's lame. I was lucky enough to find a wave at a new DG just down the street from me. I got Snake-Eyes (this version was the first SE I was able to track down as a kid, so very cool to me), Storm Shadow, Cobra Commander and Shipwreck. I left the Duke there and I never saw the Cobra Trooper.
I was hoping to get another SS for a custom, but maybe now I won't be so lucky. Or maybe I'd just leave it for someone else and not be greedy