G.I. Joe sends Cooper back to his A-Team roots, giving him his first flesh-and-blood action franchise hopeful in more than a decade. Since A-Team, Cooper’s blockbuster bona fides amount to his voice-over role as Rocket in Guardians Of The Galaxy and the wider MCU (Sean Gunn did the motion capture) and cameo appearances as Jor-El in Superman and the memorable Marlamin in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. But after a couple of directorial Oscar whiffs, The Maestro and Is This Thing On?, Cooper said “Go Joe” to playing the leader of the battalion of cartoon warfighters. The actor is also directing and starring in the latest Ocean’s 11 reboot, a prequel starring Margot Robbie. According to Deadline, he didn’t know if he’d have time to commit to G.I. Joe, but after reading the script and meeting with McBride, he apparently said, “Go, Joe.” No word if the film will feature appearances by Snow Job or Mr. Body Massage Machine.
McBride’s G.I. Joe will be a reboot of the live-action film franchise, which flamed out after 2013’s Retaliation. In those films, Channing Tatum played Duke, though the character was killed off early in the sequel. Paramount attempted to revive the series with the prequel Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins in 2021, but like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the series never moved forward after one movie. McBride won a bake-off to write and direct G.I. Joe over disgraced Hollywood screenwriter Max Landis, who was also in the running to write the script.
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