There are two different G.I. Joe movies in early development, Deadline has confirmed, between The Righteous Gemstones star/creator Danny McBride and American Ultra scribe Max Landis.
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.
Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is also the producer on the G.I. Joe movies.
Landis, the son of filmmaker John Landis, made bank by selling three pitches out of college in a six-month time frame early on in his career. His script for Chronicle landed on the Black List and ultimately sold to 20th Century Fox and Davis Entertainment.
Landis was accused by multiple women of sexual abuse between 2017-2019. His management company Writ Large dropped him in June 2019 amid then recent allegations.
There’s a big fandom, particularly among GenXers, for G.I. Joe given the 1980s toys and TV series. While Paramount achieved tentpole box office with the first two movies with a combined global gross of $678.1M and stars such as Bruce Willis, Dwayne Johnson and Channing Tatum in the franchise, the post-Covid 2021 spinoff Snake Eyes, about one of the most popular G.I. Joe characters –a mute ninja who suffered a fire turned sharpshooter– fell off a cliff with $40M at the global box office.