The Year of Channing Tatum, which is what I'm pretty sure we'll call 2012 in the history books when all things are said and done, looks to continue handily next year, both thanks to the delay of G.I. Joe: Retaliation (which was added to include more of Tatum, believe it or not) and White House Down, in which he plays a Secret Service agent valiantly defending the center of federal government during a terrorist attack. We've gotten a few glimpses behind the scenes of the film, but now the first official images have hit the web. Take a look at a few of them below.
These come, as you can probably tell, from the newest issue of entertainment Weekly, which was handily scanned by the folks at Hey U Guys. And the images manage to reveal a few things I didn't quite realize before. First of all, Maggie Gyllenhaal appears to play a pretty major part in it, as the Secret Service boss who's in the middle of interviewing Tatum when the terrorist attack goes down. And second-- and maybe I could have realized this by reading the synopsis more carefully-- Tatum's character isn't in fact a full-fledged agent yet, but a Washington, D.C. cop interviewing for the job. That makes the whole setup just more similar to Die Hard, which seems to be a clear inspiration for the film. Though with Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow's Roland Emmerich behind the camera, we can probably expect some slightly more over-the-top action than in that stripped-down Bruce Willis classic.
But the sight of Channing Tatum in that tank top pretty much confirms it-- this is the new Die Hard we should be looking forward to next year, not the actual sequel A Good Day To Die Hard, which looks more over the top than most Emmerich movies. We don't have to give up on Bruce Willis in favor of Channing Tatum, of course-- we're lucky enough to have both! But if anyone's going to be the heir to that everyman action hero throne, Tatum looks like he's already got it sewn up.
White House Down comes to theaters June 28, 2013.
