Say Danny McBride to most people, notes Alasdair Stuart, and they’ll think of Eastbound & Down or any of the other comedies he’s done, all defined by his gruff, no nonsense, minimal competency maximum effort characters. McBride’s always fun. And he’s also a quietly very successful writer, best known for his work on the Halloween sequel trilogy. A little while ago, McBride was one of the two writers revealed to be working on a G.I. Joe pitch. The other was Max Landis, and thankfully, that’s no longer happening. But McBride’s is, and talking to Happy Sad Confused, he revealed how it’s going and how he got the gig.

“I’ve always loved [G.I. Joe], and so I had an idea for a Dreadnoks movie,” McBride said. “And I just wanted to do a Dreadnoks movie, and I went to Paramount and pitched it, and they were like, ‘Well, the franchise kind of needs to be launched, so we can’t come out with a Dreadnoks movie. Would you have an angle for G.I. Joe proper?’ And I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’ll have an angle for that.’”

The Dreadnoks are a high tech biker gang (with conveniently unique weapons and looks for the toy department!) who were a major adversary in the original comics. They’re grungy and weird and oddly threatening at the same time as being deeply inept. Perfect McBride fodder.

There’s more at the link, but McBride also revealed that it’s set in Springfield, a fictional US town that’s actually a Cobra training community. This is very good news, as the Springfield stories were some of the best of the original run. It’s a perfect American town, that’s also essentially a Hitler youth training camp and the cognitive dissonance of the two creates some of the comic’s finest hours. McBride is also clearly aware of potential problems with his usual approach: “Weirdly, it grounds G.I. Joe. It’s not a comedy. It’s kind of suspense and action, and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

I’m here for this one. McBride’s good at this and like him I was a G.I. Joe kid. Let’s see where they go with it.

The full show is below.

 

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