Paramount Pictures’ G.I. Joe film franchise reboot has hit a roadblock, as the studio has dropped its Max Landis-fronted project less than a month after its announcement.
As reported by Variety, the studio passed on Landis’ treatment for creative reasons, and the project is now back to the drawing board, with Paramount still in talks with other writers and awaiting potential scripts. Additionally, another script for a separate G.I. Joe project is currently being penned by The Righteous Gemstones star Danny McBride.
Speaking to Variety, Landis said that he was “tremendously grateful to have been given the opportunity”, adding that his pitch came together “very serendipitously based on the coolness of the weird and subversive idea” that centred around Cobra, the franchise’s central villain organisation, “having successfully taken over the world and reduced G.I. Joe to a conspiracy theory.”
The news of Landis securing a pitch for the G.I. Joe film made headlines, as the 40-year-old screenwriter, the son of prolific Hollywood director John Landis and a prominent screenwriter in his own right, had his career cratered after allegations of sexual assault and other misconduct were brought against him in 2016 by multiple women. Although no charges were filed against him, this led to Landis being dropped from his representatives at CAA and the cancellation of all the projects he had in the works, essentially stalling his career since then.
Landis’ Cobra-focused script certainly sounds interesting, and it’s a shame that it will never come to fruition. With one of the franchise’s planned projects now scrapped, it remains to be seen how Paramount will continue G.I. Joe’s big-screen legacy, following two past box office hits, 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and its 2013 sequel, Retaliation, alongside an underperforming, yet still interesting spin-off, 2021’s Snake Eyes.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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