Danny McBride is probably the last name you’d expect to hear when anyone talks about rebooting the G.I. Joe movies, but Paramount clearly knows something about his talents that we don’t. To be fair, he’s surprised fans with his involvement with projects outside comedy before. He’s been involved with writing and producing the new Halloween films, and even provided the story for The Exorcist: Believer. Still, none of that gave us any inclination that he would be the guy to bring back G.I. Joe to the big screen. And now, according to reports, he could be bringing Bradley Cooper along too.
McBride Confirms the Script Is Done
Talking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast a few weeks ago, McBride revealed that he has a finished script for G.I. Joe and plans to begin shooting next year. “I’ve written one. Yes. I’m stoked about it. I’m really fired up about the script. Paramount seems fired up about it. So hopefully we’re shooting it next year,” he told Josh Horowitz.
From a Dreadnoks Pitch to Cobra’s Secret Town
But as he explained, he actually never planned to write a Duke-and-the-Joes movie. He actually pitched a Dreadnoks movie to the studio first. “I had an idea for a Dreadnoks movie,” he said. “And I went to Paramount and pitched it, and they were like, ‘Well, the franchise kind of needs… to be launched. So we can’t come out with a Dreadnoks movie. Would you… have an angle for G.I. Joe proper?’ And I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’ll have an angle for that.'”
McBride called up his writing partners, Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri, and the three of them figured out an approach. “We cracked something that we really love a lot, and it’s — you know, weirdly it grounds G.I. Joe. It’s not a comedy. It’s like kind of suspense and action, and yeah, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
It’s not a comedy? That’s the part that probably takes most fans by surprise.
“You’re following Duke and a group of other Joes,” McBride explained. “There’s that town in the comic, Springfield, which is a town that’s secretly all Cobra, and so that is where our film takes place.” That’s a deep pull from Steve Gerber’s 1985 two-parter There’s No Place Like Springfield, where Shipwreck gets tricked into thinking he’s living a normal suburban life while Cobra quietly works him for a stolen formula. Paranoid neighbors, a town that isn’t what it looks like, an entire community built as a trap. That’s the backbone McBride is building his reboot around.
The good news is that he sounds like a huge fan of the franchise and is definitely going to handle the adaptation with the kind of care that fans expect – unlike the previous films. “G.I. Joe was my thing when I was a kid. I liked that more than Star Wars, more than anything,” he said, confessing that he still owns his old action figures.
By this point, fans were ready to give him a shot. Based on what he expressed, it sounds like G.I. Joe is finally in the right hands. All he needed was a big star behind it.
Bradley Cooper Circles as Hemsworth Steps Away
Chris Hemsworth was in talks, but it sounds like he walked before he signed anything. Now, reports by Nexus Point News suggest that Bradley Cooper is circling as his replacement. Cooper and McBride go all the way back to Aloha in 2015.
But McBride’s already hinting that casting is heating up beyond that. “We have some pretty interesting people lining up to be in it, too. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it looks to be like it’s going to be pretty fun.”
Based on their history together, Cooper is probably in.
Paramount hasn’t confirmed a start date beyond “next year.” Given how long this franchise has waited for someone who actually cares about it, that might be worth the wait.
