Bradley Cooper Set To Play Duke in GI Joe Reboot at Paramount

Oscar-nominated actor and filmmaker Bradley Cooper is going to become a Real American Hero. As first reported by Deadline, Bradley Cooper is boarding Paramount Pictures’ planned GI Joe reboot directed by Danny McBride.

McBride is directing the feature from a script he’s co-writing with Jeff Fradley and John Carcieri. He landed the directing gig earlier this year following multiple pitches on the project made to Paramount.

Deadline reports that McBride had a wish list of actors he wanted to star in the picture, and Cooper was at the top of his list. It’s said that despite Cooper’s schedule, he knew he wanted to star in the movie after meeting with McBride and reading the script, with the actor getting into negotiations in recent weeks.

Duke, aka Conrad S. Hauser, is best known as the GI Joe team’s field leader, joining the GI Joe: A Real American Hero toyline and its cartoon adaptation in 1983. He made his first appearance in Larry Hama’s GI Joe: A Real American Hero comic series in Issue #22 in 1984.

Duke has been a featured player throughout the franchise’s many iterations over the years. Channing Tatum previously portrayed the character in live-action in 2009’s GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra and GI Joe: Retaliation in 2013.

Bradley Cooper Sounds the Battle Cry in GI Joe Reboot

The new GI Joe movie reboot is being produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, and Zev Foreman for Hasbro Entertainment. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but McBride previously said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that the story would follow Duke and the other Joes in the town of Springfield, which is secretly controlled by GI Joe’s archenemies, Cobra.

Back at CinemaCon 2024, Paramount Pictures announced a planned live-action movie that would see the iconic Hasbro properties of GI Joe and Transformers cross over. The crossover was also teased in a credits scene for the 2023 movie, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

Deadline reports that the new GI Joe reboot has been “uncoupled” from the planned crossover, which is “no longer in development.” The planned reboot does not yet have a release date, but McBride revealed he plans to start shooting the movie next year.

Bradley Cooper is also currently hard at work on an untitled Ocean’s Eleven prequel at Warner Bros. Pictures. He’s directing, writing, producing, and starring in the new movie opposite Margot Robbie. It’s due out on June 25, 2027.