Yahoo Movies Snake Eyes producer had "questions" over Henry Golding's casting
Snake Eyes' director Lorenzo di Bonaventura has revealed he initially had "questions" over Henry Golding's casting, given his filmography prior to signing on to the action-packed project.
While breaking down the G.I. Joe spin-off's final trailer – which emerged online yesterday (June 22) – the producer said that bringing in the Crazy Rich Asians and Last Christmas star "was the studio's idea." He also recalled how, despite having "embraced it immediately," the creative team had worries over how well the actor would be received by hardcore genre fans.
"I think the action audience can be very critical of people coming into it, especially people who've been established in a romantic comedy or lighter vein of movies," di Bonaventura explained to Empire.
Related: Crazy Rich Asians' Henry Golding says next James Bond is "an opportunity for change"
"Henry's a rising star, there's no doubt about that, so that wasn't a question. He's a handsome guy, no question. When you see him in his movies, he's a big guy, he's tall, he's wide, he's got a real physical presence, which helps a lot," he continued, before going on to say that Golding's ability to keep up with experienced stuntmen was discussed beforehand, too.
"You never know about that dedication. Our conversation was, 'We have to wipe the audience's memory clean of the romantic comedy Henry Golding.' We open the trailer with Henry in a cage fight with a big guy. That's the introduction to the character.
"In that scene, you see he's got blood on his face, a huge guy waging a real war with him, and you immediately go, 'Oh, this guy's got what it takes.'
Related: Crazy Rich Asians star joins Netflix's new romance movie with Fifty Shades of Grey's Dakota Johnson
"So for us, that was an important thing to say to anyone who wanted to question whether Henry had it, you can't really ask that question after that sequence. So we wanted to give you that and go from there. He put the work in, he really did."
Directed by Robert Schwentke, who has helmed outings such as Divergent's Insurgent and RED, Snake Eyes promises to explore the titular assassin's motivations and get to the heart of who he really is, as well "his journey as a person."
"Robert is a huge Japanese cinephile, everything from [Akira] Kurosawa to just the phenomenal Spaghetti Westerns of samurai movies," Golding told Entertainment Weekly back in November.
"He is so hooked into that history and we see some of those scenes. With some of the fight scenes, there are some chimbara sequences. A lot of attention to cultural detail was put into this movie."
Andrew Koji (Warrior), Úrsula Corberó (Money Heist), Haruka Abe (Ideal), Takehiro Hira (Lost Girls & Love Hotels), Iko Uwais (The Raid) and Ready or Not's Samara Weaving also star in the movie.
Snake Eyes is set to release on July 23 in the US and August 18 in the UK.
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