G.I. Joe is heading back to the big screen.

Again.

But Paramount’s latest attempt to revive the franchise already looks very different from what many fans were expecting.

Bradley Cooper is set to play Duke in a new live-action G.I. Joe movie from Danny McBride.

And perhaps even more importantly, the project is reportedly no longer the G.I. Joe/Transformers crossover that Paramount previously appeared to be building towards.

For a franchise with a complicated cinematic history, this could represent yet another fresh start.

Bradley Cooper takes over as Duke

Duke is one of the most recognisable characters in the G.I. Joe universe.

Channing Tatum previously played him in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and returned briefly in G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

The role will now pass to Bradley Cooper.

Cooper is an interesting choice because he has spent much of the past decade balancing major studio films with more filmmaker-driven work.

He is also already familiar to blockbuster audiences through his role as Rocket in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films.

The exact version of Duke he will play remains unknown.

Danny McBride is making G.I. Joe?

That might be the more unexpected part of the story.

Danny McBride is writing and directing the new film.

Most audiences know McBride from comedy, particularly Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones.

But he has also worked behind the scenes on major genre properties.

McBride helped write the recent Halloween trilogy alongside filmmaker David Gordon Green and has demonstrated a strong understanding of franchises with deeply established fanbases.

For G.I. Joe, he is reportedly working on the screenplay alongside Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri.

It is certainly not the most obvious creative team Paramount could have assembled.

That may be precisely what makes the project interesting.

What happened to the Transformers crossover?

Fans who watched Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will remember the movie’s final surprise.

Anthony Ramos’ Noah Diaz attends what appears to be a normal job interview, only to discover that the organisation recruiting him is G.I. Joe.

It was essentially a giant cinematic sign saying: Transformers and G.I. Joe are about to meet.

A crossover movie subsequently entered development.

Now, however, reports say McBride’s new G.I. Joe film has been separated from that project.

The long-planned crossover is no longer the film currently moving forward.

That is quite a significant change.

Instead of immediately combining two Hasbro properties into a shared cinematic universe, Paramount appears to be concentrating on rebuilding G.I. Joe first.

G.I. Joe has struggled at the movies

Hollywood has already tried several different approaches.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra arrived in 2009.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation followed in 2013.

Then Paramount tried again with Snake Eyes in 2021.

None managed to establish a movie franchise with anything close to the longevity of Transformers.

Yet the property itself remains enormously recognisable.

For audiences who grew up in the 1980s, G.I. Joe was everywhere.

There were toys.

There were comics.

There was the animated series.

Characters such as Duke, Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Cobra Commander, Destro and Storm Shadow became part of an entire generation’s pop-culture vocabulary.

That legacy is exactly why Hollywood keeps coming back.

Another reboot — but an intriguing one

There are still many unanswered questions.

We don’t know the complete cast.

We don’t know which members of Cobra will appear.

We don’t know whether the story will lean heavily into the animated series or reinterpret the property more dramatically.

And Paramount hasn’t announced a release date yet.

What we do have is one of the stranger combinations attached to a major franchise revival in recent memory.

Bradley Cooper as Duke.

Danny McBride writing and directing.

And, apparently, no Transformers.

Maybe G.I. Joe doesn’t need another cinematic universe yet.

Maybe it just needs a good G.I. Joe movie.

And knowing whether Paramount can finally pull that off is, appropriately, half the battle.