So far the best look we've gotten at this summer's G.I. Joe: Retaliation has been the first trailer, though my favorite marketing for the film so far is the Super Bowl spot, which opens with The Rock quoting Jay-Z and only gets more fun from there. When I caught up with the film's producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and director Jon M. Chu at New York's Toy Fair, where Hasbro was displaying a whole line of toys from the film, I couldn't resist asking them about the Jay-Z quote, and how the famous rapper found his way into the commercial for one of the summer's biggest hits.
The conversation with both of them, as you can see in the videos below, went a lot of places from there, talking about how G.I. Joe: Retaliation is headed in a completely different direction than its predecessor, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, and what Chu, whose previous film was the Justin Bieber documentary Never Say Never, is bringing to the franchise. There was also plenty of talk about The Rock himself, who you can see makes a cameo appearance in my Chu interview, making sure that his action figures-- which were in the Hasbro showroom next door-- were anatomically correct.
Check out both of these short interviews below for details on what to expect from G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and come back later for my conversations with the film's stars Adrianne Palicki, DJ Cotrona, and of course, The Rock. G.I. Joe: Retaliation is in theaters June 29 this year.
