Bradley Cooper is officially reporting for duty.
The 12-time Oscar nominee will play Duke, the field commander of the G.I. Joe team, in Paramount Pictures’ new live-action reboot of the Hasbro franchise. The project will be directed by Danny McBride, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri. Paramount is describing the movie as a fresh take on G.I. Joe, while additional casting and a release date have not yet been announced.
The casting gives the reboot something the franchise has lacked since Snake Eyes struggled theatrically in 2021: a major star positioned at the center of the team rather than another attempt to build around a single masked character.
It also confirms that this G.I. Joe movie will not be the long-discussed crossover with Transformers. Paramount says the two properties have now been “uncoupled,” despite Transformers: Rise of the Beasts teasing a potential shared movie universe back in 2023.
Danny McBride’s movie already has a very specific G.I. Joe setting
Plot details are still mostly secret, but McBride has revealed enough to make this sound more specific than a generic franchise reboot.
“You’re following Duke and a group of other Joes,” McBride previously said.
He also explained that the story will take the team to Springfield, the seemingly ordinary town from the comics that is secretly controlled by Cobra. That choice matters because it gives the film an immediate hook beyond another global superweapon plot: the Joes are potentially entering an entire community built around their enemy.
For longtime readers, Springfield is one of the franchise’s more useful pieces of mythology. Instead of Cobra existing only inside giant bases and secret laboratories, the town allows the organization to hide inside normal American life. That could give McBride room to mix espionage, paranoia and action rather than simply escalating the scale of explosions.
McBride has also teased that “interesting people” are lining up for the cast, though Cooper remains the only major actor officially announced so far.
Cooper is inheriting Duke from Channing Tatum
Duke is familiar territory for movie audiences, even if the franchise itself is being reset.
Channing Tatum played Captain Duke Hauser in 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and returned for G.I. Joe: Retaliation in 2013. Paramount’s official records list Tatum as Duke in both films, although Retaliation shifted much of its focus toward Dwayne Johnson’s Roadblock.
Cooper will therefore not be continuing Tatum’s version of the character. The new film is described as a reimagining, giving McBride and Cooper freedom to rebuild Duke without being tied closely to those earlier movies.
That may be the smarter route.
The first two live-action G.I. Joe films were commercially respectable but never turned the property into the sustained theatrical franchise Paramount wanted. The Rise of Cobra earned about $302 million worldwide, while Retaliation improved to roughly $376 million. The 2021 Snake Eyes reboot then fell to around $40 million worldwide.
The new movie is effectively another clean start.
Danny McBride directing may be the most unexpected part
Cooper as a military commander is relatively easy to imagine after films such as American Sniper.
Danny McBride directing a major G.I. Joe tentpole is the stranger and potentially more interesting choice.
McBride is best known for comedy through projects including The Righteous Gemstones, Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals. He has directed television episodes before, but G.I. Joe will be his first major action feature as a director. Hasbro officially announced his attachment in July.
That background does not necessarily mean the reboot will become a comedy. McBride has long worked as a writer and producer on genre projects, and placing the Joes inside a Cobra-controlled town could benefit from the slightly strange, character-driven perspective he brings to his television work.
The film is being produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian and Zev Foreman for Hasbro Entertainment.
For now, Paramount is keeping the rest of the team classified.
The important change is that G.I. Joe finally has its new Duke, and Bradley Cooper gives this reboot a very different center of gravity from the previous attempts. If McBride follows through on the Springfield setting, the bigger opportunity may be making G.I. Joe feel like a story again rather than simply another recognizable Hasbro brand waiting to be relaunched.
