Anna Daniels
Yet another G.I. Joe film is in development at Paramount, because evidently someone over there believes that this is still a major, bankable franchise.
Paramount and Hasbro are currently in negotiations with the writing team of Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, who did uncredited polish on the upcoming Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins movie, to write a follow-up that’s intended to expand the fictional world even further.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, this new movie is meant to build on what we see in Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, “making it not quite a sequel but rather an expansion to take audience goers deeper into the world of Joe.”
With only two G.I. Joe movies coming out over the past decade-plus – 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and 2013’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation, neither of which left a lasting mark on pop culture – do modern audiences care at all about this property? Or is this a case of Paramount being pot-committed after making a distribution deal with Hasbro and trying to “make G.I. Joe happen” in the 2020s?
It sure seems like this property is dead in the water right now, but maybe people will care about Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins because it stars Henry Golding, the charming, handsome star of Crazy Rich Asians and Last Christmas. But from the outside looking in, Paramount is putting an awful lot of faith in that film if they’re banking on people being interested enough to stick around for a follow-up. The idea that folks are going to be so hyped after seeing Red director Robert Schwentke’s take on Snake Eyes that they line up for a quasi-sequel is not a sure thing…but I guess nothing is a sure thing in this business, so sure, go for it. Good luck, Paramount and Hasbro. Knock ’em dead.
In addition to polishing the Snake Eyes screenplay, Shrapnel and Waterhouse also worked on Captain Marvel, The Aftermath, Seberg, Netflix’s upcoming remake of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic literary classic Rebecca, Legendary’s adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris’s Ex Machina (the movie version of which is titled The Great Machine), and a remake of the Agatha Christie murder mystery And Then There Were None.
Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins is currently dated for October 23, 2020, but as with everything else aiming to come out this year, that date could change as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
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