On the heels of the announcement that The Rock was lining up to be Roadblock, the G.I. Joe sequel has some more casting news to whet your whistle …
Rapper-turned-actor RZA … in negotiations to board Paramount’s new G.I. Joe movie being directed by Jon M. Chu …
RZA will play a martial arts master named the Blind Master who in the past trained Joe commandoes Snake-Eyes and Jinx ([Elodie] Yung).
RZA's credits include American Gangster, The Next Three Days and Repo Men, and stars as the title characters [sic] in The Man with the Iron Fists with Russell Crowe. He is repped by ICM and Joe Carlone management.
This approach has some liberties taken with the source material, sure to irk some fans but is actually interesting: if the movie's universe hold the idiom that Snake-Eyes is the toughest person in the whole property, and a Black man trained him … that's kind of cool, right?
After RZA's turn on screen and doing the music for Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, this seems like it might be a good fit for the multi-hyphenate.
[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]