Bradley Cooper Officially Cast as Duke in Danny McBride’s G.I. Joe Reboot
Paramount Pictures has officially cast Bradley Cooper as Duke in a new G.I. Joe movie, with Deadline breaking the news on October 1 and Variety and The Hollywood Reporter quickly confirming it. Danny McBride is directing from a script he co-wrote with Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri, marking his first time directing a theatrical film after years of television work on The Righteous Gemstones. Cooper steps into a role last played by Channing Tatum in 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and 2013’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation, where Duke was killed off early in the sequel.
A Grounded Take on Cobra
Rather than continuing the globetrotting action of the earlier films or 2021’s Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, McBride is pulling from Larry Hama’s 1980s Marvel Comics run for a smaller-scale story. The plot follows Duke and the Joes investigating an ordinary looking town that turns out to be secretly overrun by Cobra agents. McBride has described the tone as a sharp break from the franchise’s campier reputation, saying “it’s not a comedy, it’s kind of suspense and action.”
McBride’s Feature Directorial Debut
The G.I. Joe job is McBride’s first time in the director’s chair for a theatrical release, after his script reportedly won out over a competing take also in development at Paramount. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, and Zev Foreman are producing for Hasbro Entertainment, with the studio targeting an early 2027 start for shooting. No release date has been set, and casting for the rest of the Joe team is still underway.
Danny McBride is stepping behind the camera for the first time on a theatrical film with the G.I. Joe reboot.
Not Their First Time Working Together
Cooper and McBride already have history together. Cooper made a surprise appearance in the Season 4 premiere of McBride’s HBO series The Righteous Gemstones, playing ancestor Elijah Gemstone, a thief who assumes a murdered pastor’s identity generations before the modern day Gemstone family. McBride has said Cooper was his “pie-in-the-sky pick” for the part.
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Picture Source: Raph_PH (CC BY 2.0), Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
