Featured image taken from the cover of 1990’s G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #100, by Ron Wagner and Bob McLeod.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount has hired Max Landis (Bright) and Danny McBride (The Righteous Gemstones) to write separate scripts for a new G.I. Joe movie. The news came as a shock, as Landis was the subject of Daily Beast exposé in 2019, where eight women accused him of sexual, physical, and psychologically abusive behavior. Landis, who has admitted to engaging in “emotional abuse, infidelity, and wild unpredictable emotional behavior and tantrums,” had (until now) not worked on a Hollywood project since the article’s publication.
Screenwriter Aaron Stewart-Ahn (Mandy) commented, “When I pointed out this morning [Paramount Skydance CEO David] Ellison had a history of hiring (untalented) men who faced allegations of sexual harassment, [I] had no idea a new one would drop in hours.” He adds, “I know this shithead mediated himself enough so there’s jokes to be made, but hope we can keep in mind the women Landis abused have to see and live with this.”
Brett White published an article titled Paramount Launches Battle for the Soul of G.I. Joe — And Danny McBride Has To Win, where he describes Landis as “not only gross, but — just speaking from experience as a person who has had to listen to Landis in panels and interviews for work — he’s insufferable. Nobody has anything positive to say about the guy, nor do many people have positive things to say about his movies!”
As Stewart-Ahn and the Reporter point out, Paramount’s new owners Skydance have a history of hiring men with troubling accusations. Pixar’s former chief creative officer John Lasseter was hired to lead Skydance Animation after his departure from Disney over reports of sexual misconduct (which he himself described as “missteps”), and the studio have fast-tracked a new Rush Hour film with director Brett Ratner, despite the allegations of rape and sexual assault that halted his career in 2017.
Military technology journalist Kelsey Atherton also weighed in, saying, “[It] sucks shit that creeps like Brett Ratner and Max Landis are returning to filmmaking after the industry had, for a time, rejected them over sex-pestery. I’m glad at least that the reported stories of the returns are explicit that these are sex pests with allegations being welcomed back by monsters.”
The news continues a difficult path for Paramount’s G.I. Joe franchise. The series began in 2009 with The Rise of Cobra, which only grossed $302.5 million against a $175 million budget, and continued with the more moderately successful Retaliation in 2013. A spin-off and reboot, Snake Eyes, flopped when released in 2021, and a crossover was teased in 2023’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, but that film also underperformed, meaning it remains up in the air, along with other future Transformers films.
G.I. Joe has also been absent from TV screens since 2010’s Hub series Renegades, although a new, older-skewing cartoon based on Skybound’s well-received Energon Universe comics — which have reimagined the Joes and Transformers as co-existing from the start since 2023 — is in development. In any case, for many G.I. Joe fans, this has not been the best start to a new take on the franchise, and will likely continue to raise anxiety for fans of other properties in the wake of the forthcoming Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.
