Corona | Coming Attractions

Was Stephen Sommers fired as the director of G.I. Joe at some point recently and then brought back? A disturbing post that appeared on producer Don Murphy's message forum (and which has now been deleted) said that Sommers has been fired from the production, "locked out of the editing room," and that editor-come-director Stuart Baird had been hired by Paramount to fix the film's problems in the editing booth. "Sommers was then forced by his William Morris agents to pretend that he was working on Tarzan over at Warner Brothers doing design work, even though that film doesn't even have a good script yet," wrote the message board poster. "When word of the firing started to be whispered about in Hollywood, Sommers was summoed back to the editing room- but only to save appearances, Baird is still editing the movie with studio input."

Latino Review's George "El Guapo" Roush contacted G.I. Joe producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and asked him about the rumor. Di Bonaventura shot it down and played down any talk that Sommers had been fired at any time from the project. "It's very unfair to Steve, it's completely untrue he was never asked to leave or been fired or any of that," said di Bonaventura. "That's ridiculous... it's hurts a guy's career when people go around talking about that he was fired or he didn't do a good job and truth is he did a really good job. People are going to enjoy the movie and the test audiences enjoyed the movie."

Was the message forum post a truthful leak from the inside or someone with an axe to grind against Sommers? We may never know the truth.