You’d think “movie about a team of badass soldiers saving the planet based on a long-running media franchise with a passionate fanbase” would be easy to crack, but G.I. Joe has proven anything but. Still, the modest-at-best success of the previous two films based on the toys, comics, and animated adventures of those real American heroes hasn’t deterred Paramount and Hasbro, who are now working on another live-action film. It has writers and everything!

The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop, including the news that Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec are currently working on the script. Plot details are unknown, but THR reports that it is an “ensemble piece” and that one of the characters will be Chuckles, an infiltration expert who made his G.I. Joe debut (in toy and comic form) in 1987. Since they killed off Channing Tatum’s Duke, Snake Eyes is still apparently getting his own spin-off, and Dwayne Johnson is presumably too busy and expensive to return as Roadblock, it really sounds like the pickings are getting slim when it comes to beloved Joes. Apologies to all the Chuckles fans out there.

The report also suggests that Paramount and Hasbro hope the film will inspire multiple other spin-offs. So look for that Chuckles solo adventure in 2023, perhaps?

Appelbaum and Nemec do feel like the right fit for a gig like this, with credits that include the spy series Alias, the action thriller Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and the most recent live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. So they have plenty of experience handling action-heavy tales of tough characters getting the job done and franchises that have powerful nostalgic followings.

However, the real key here will be finding a director to capture the perfect mix of adventurous derring-do and tongue-in-cheek humor that has defined the best Joe stories over the years. 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and 2013’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation did fine worldwide, but didn’t exactly tap into the cultural zeitgeist like Transformers or anything from Marvel. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone out there who seems especially jazzed for a new G.I. Joe movie these days. On one level, this is a problem, but let’s look at the glass as half-full for a second: this also means Paramount and Hasbro have a clean-enough slate to try something fresh and wild. Let’s hope they take full advantage of that.

Meanwhile, that Snake Eyes movie is still set to open on October 16, 2020. If that makes that date, we’ll see what comes of this other film.

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