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While Transformers has enjoyed phenomenal success at the movies, its fellow Hasbro brand G.I. Joe has had a rough go of it on the big screen. The first G.I. Joe movie was delayed after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, when Transformers seemed like a safer bet for a global blockbuster, and it was finally released as G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in 2009. It did well enough to earn a sequel, but it didn’t set the world on fire, so the studio brought in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — who’d just given the Fast & Furious franchise a much-needed shot in the arm — to work his magic on the 2013 follow-up, G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
Again, it did well, but not well enough to declare G.I. Joe a bona fide blockbuster franchise. Eight years later, Hasbro pivoted to a solo movie based on their most popular character, Snake Eyes, but it got buried amid the fallout of the COVID pandemic. In 2023, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts teased a crossover with G.I. Joe when Anthony Ramos’ character was recruited to a secret military organization that turned out to be — you guessed it! — G.I. Joe. But Paramount is under new ownership now, and they don’t seem interested in a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover, but they are determined to make a G.I. Joe movie franchise work.
A few months ago, it was reported that Paramount executives were fielding competing G.I. Joe pitches from Danny McBride, one of HBO’s star creators and one of the greatest comedy minds of his generation, and Max Landis, who had one hit in 2012 and has since been swamped with sexual abuse allegations. Mercifully, Paramount executives have chosen McBride’s pitch for production, and scrapped Landis’ project altogether, and everything we’ve heard about the movie so far sounds extremely promising.
Danny McBride's G.I. Joe Movie Sounds Like An Absolute Blast
Since McBride is best known for smashing his head into a bathroom sink in Pineapple Express, you’d be forgiven for expecting his G.I. Joe movie to be a comedy. In McBride’s previous projects, he’s taken Channing Tatum as a slave, savagely beaten a man with a garbage can (and stolen his hat), and put a naked Walton Goggins on waterskis. But, by all accounts, his G.I. Joe movie will be a straightforward action thriller, and a dark, action-heavy G.I. Joe movie is much more tantalizing than whatever crossover madness they were cooking at the end of Rise of the Beasts.
McBride has been doing the rounds recently to promote his debut book — the New York Times bestselling short story collection Thrilling Tales of Modern Men — and he’s been talking up his G.I. Joe project. When he talks about G.I. Joe, McBride sounds really passionate about the property, and really knowledgeable about the deep cuts. He grew up on the classic cartoon, and he’s hoping to bring some of that nostalgic fun into live-action.
In an interview on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, McBride teased some of the details of the plot. The screenplay, which he co-wrote with his Righteous Gemstones cohorts Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri, takes place in Springfield, a town secretly run by Cobra, and the plot will see Duke and the team battling Cobra on their own turf.
McBride is confirmed to be making his feature directorial debut with this G.I. Joe movie, and it’s set to begin filming in 2027. He also confirmed that the movie won’t be a comedy. It won’t be an ironic self-parody like Thor: Ragnarok or the recent Masters of the Universe reboot; they’re taking G.I. Joe seriously. All of this is music to my ears. Every new detail we hear about this project is better than the last.
