Deadline reports Bradley Cooper will star in Danny McBride‘s G.I. Joe reboot, as Conrad “Duke” S. Hauser, the Joes’ field leader. Cooper, 51, was reportedly McBride’s top choice for the role, and agreed to take on the role in spite of a busy schedule after reading the script (penned by McBride with his Righteous Gemstones collaborators Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri).
Cooper will be the second actor to play Duke in live-action, following Channing Tatum, who portrayed him in 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and its 2013 sequel Retaliation. Tatum, 46, was a lot younger than Cooper when he took on the role, suggesting the film will eschew another origin story for the Joes’ conflict with Cobra, and give us an older and more experienced take on the character.
While Cooper is no stranger to geeky properties, having voiced Rocket Raccoon in the MCU, played Jor-El in James Gunn‘s Superman, and even co-produced Joker, it does mark something of a throwback to earlier work like The A-Team movie, and American Sniper, with the actor having concentrated lately on directing himself in more dramatic fare like A Star is Born, Maestro, and Is This Thing On?
Incidentally, Cooper’s MCU co-star (and one-time Orion Pax/Optimus Prime voice actor) Chris Hemsworth had been attached to star in the Transformers/G.I. Joe movie teased at the end of 2023’s Rise of the Beasts. While it was never publicly said he would play, his role was likely another version of Duke. Following Cooper’s casting, Paramount confirmed with Variety that the crossover is on the backburner for the time being.
Cooper’s next directorial outing is set to be an Ocean’s Eleven prequel, co-starring Margot Robbie, due for release on June 25, 2027. That film will become one of first the Warner Bros. releases distributed by G.I. Joe producer Paramount in the wake of the merger being finalized next week. He and McBride previously worked together on The Righteous Gemstones, and on the controversial 2015 Cameron Crowe release Aloha.
