After surprisingly announcing plans to work with disgraced screenwriter Max Landis on a forthcoming G.I. Joe film, Paramount Skydance Corporation has revealed that they've passed on Landis' treatment.
This essentially means that Landis' pitch failed to garner the right approvals to greenlight an actual script commission.
Max Landis was effectively pushed out of Hollywood in 2019 after an article from The Daily Beast recounted accusations from eight women who accused Landis of sexual assault, rape, and psychological abuse.
In the aftermath, his management company severed ties with him, and several major projects he had been attached to were quickly abandoned.
Reports about Landis’ proposed take on the G.I. Joe film revealed a radically different direction for the franchise. His version reportedly opened with Cobra already victorious and ruling the world.
Furthermore, two of G.I. Joe's most recognizable characters, Snake Eyes and Duke, were reportedly not set to appear in the story at all.
Paramount is said to be in something of an incubation period with the G.I. Joe franchise as the studio is weighing its options, deciding on whether to move forward with a Transformers crossover, which was teased in 2023's Transformers: Rise of the Beasts or moving forward with Danny McBride's pitch.
To date, there have been 3 live-action G.I. Joe films released, starring the likes of Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
Dwayne Johnson’s 2013 action spectacle G.I. Joe: Retaliation ended up being the most commercially successful entry among the three live-action G.I. Joe films. Even so, none of the movies in the franchise have managed to win over critics.
Across the board, the live-action adaptations have struggled to earn “Fresh” scores on Rotten Tomatoes (the highest approval rating is 38%), frequently landing in the “Rotten” range instead.
Many critics have repeatedly pointed to issues such as convoluted storytelling, an overreliance on shaky-cam during action scenes, and a broader failure to capture the tone and spirit of the original source material with Retaliation in particular being accused of being nothing more than a Johnson vanity project.
With Paramount looking to chart a new course for itself in the wake of its recent acquisition of Skydance and looming acquisition of Warner Bros., the reinvention of the G.I. Joe brand could serve as an important cornerstone of the new leadership regime.
The thinking inside the studio, according to industry observers, is that a rebooted G.I. Joe could align with the current political climate in the United States, which places a strong cultural emphasis on hyper-masculinity and pro-military themes.
G.I. Joe started as a popular toy line from Hasbro in 1964 that enjoyed success in the '60s and '70s before launching a multimedia rebrand in 1982 that included tie-in comics from Marvel and an animated TV series that aired during the afterschool programming block.
The cartoon became a massive hit and helped define a marketing strategy that many entertainment companies would later adopt for several decades to come. In practice, the half-hour animated show worked as a longform advertisement for the action figures and other tie-in merchandise.