Two Different G.I. Joe Movies Are in Development

He’ll fight for freedom wherever there’s trouble, G.I. Joe is there.

Maybe more than one Joe is there. According to Deadline, Paramount is going to try to turn G.I. Joe from an enduring toy brand into an ongoing movie franchise for the third time. They have one film in development that’s based on a treatment by screenwriter Max Landis, and another from writer/actor Danny McBride.

As they put it:

We hear Landis has a treatment while McBride is in talks to write a treatment. Know that Paramount has myriad Transformers projects in early stages as well. You’ll remember coming off of Steven Caple Jr.’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts there was a tip off to a Transformers-G.I. Joe crossover movie. That concept isn’t out of sight, out of mind.

Rise of the Beasts came out in 2023; the post-credits scene implied that the film’s main human character, played by Anthony Ramos, was about to be recruited into the ranks of G.I. Joe. (Both toy brands are owned by Hasbro.)

READ MORE: Transformers Recap: The Full Franchise From Start to Finish

It’s been five years since the last live-action G.I. Joe movie, a prequel/spinoff film for one of the toys’ more popular characters, Snake Eyes. In 2021’s Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, viewers learned how the enigmatic ninja (played by Henry Golding) came to acquire his unique codename and costume. The film was a major bomb in theaters, grossing just $40 million worldwide against a budget two or three times that much.

Prior to that, Paramount made two more straight-forward G.I. Joes, both starring Channing Tatum as the heroic Duke: 2009’s The Rise of Cobra and 2013’s Retaliation. Both films got negative reviews but did reasonably well in theaters — although not as well as the Transformers franchise as its best, which yielded two different billion-dollar hits.

Landis, the son of director John Landis, was once a hot screenwriter in Hollywood thanks to his film Chronicle, and several other projects like American Ultra, Victor Frankenstein, and Bright. In the late 2010s, several women accused Landis of sexual abuse; his career has been very quiet since then.

McBride is known as the star and co-creator of HBO shows like Eastbound & Down and The Righteous Gemstones, and as an actor in comedy films like Pineapple Express, Sausage Party, and Your Highness. But he has done some franchise filmmaking work too; along with his frequent collaborator David Gordon Green, McBride co-wrote all three recent Halloween sequels featuring Jamie Lee Curtis.