Transformerscame out nearly a decade ago and that movie was important in that, it proved toys could provide fuel for a billion dollar franchise. Paramount tried to capture that same fire in a different bottle withG.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobraback in 2009, but it didn’t quite get there. The sequel,G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which brought the “franchise Viagra” known asDwayne “The Rock” Johnsoninto the fold, fared better and there were plans for a third movie. Unfortunately, it looks like that movie isn’t happening anytime soon, which is a shame because it was recently revealed thatG.I. Joe 3would have featured acrossoverwith theTransformersfranchise.
DisturbiadirectorD.J. Carusowas brought on to developG.I. Joe 3in early 2015, but movement on the project has been pretty slow. He eventually moved on and decided to directxXx: The Return of Xander Cage, instead. Even though it looks like his version ofG.I. Joe 3isn’t going to happen, he revealed in an interview withColliderthat he was indeed planning on bringing theTransformersinto his movie. And a crossover will eventually happen. Here is what he had to say about it when the subject of a crossing of the properties came up.
“Well yeah ,but they’re not ready to do [G.I. Joe meets Transformers] yet. That’s exactly what they should do, but they’re not ready to do that, because in fact the script that I was developing, the two worlds sort of collided at the end and when they read it they were like, ‘We’re not ready to do this yet.’… They will eventually collide those two worlds and it’s probably when Mr. Bay decides he’s done with Transformers…It came close, but I think what the studio was trying to do was reassess it and so now they’re back to the drawing board, and we’ll be talking again about it. It’s a valuable franchise, [it’s] not that they didn’t get it right, they just wanna really get it right and see if they can push it to the next level.”
Right now Paramount is pouring a lot of their resources into theTransformersfranchise. Despite a perceived decline in quality with subsequent entries after the first installment,Transformershas been an insanely profitable franchise for the studio.Michael Bayhas directed all of the movies, including the upcoming fifth entry;Transformers: The Last Knight. Despite critics, and seemingly a lot of fans, really not lovingTransformers: Age of Extinction, the movie still made more than $1 billion worldwide. That being the case, Paramount recently brought in a team of writers to form a writers room and develop the futureTransformers movie universe, which will include aBumblebeesolo movie. The thinking seems to be that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. From a business perspective, it is hard to argue with that logic.
It seems like including theTransformersinG.I. Joe 3wouldn’t just help boost the box office for theG.I. Joe movies, but it could also help breathe some new life into the giant alien robot series, which could run the risk of getting stale if Paramount can’t change things up moving forward. Not to mention thatG.I. Joe 3would have hadDwayne Johnsonreturning, but his schedule is way too insane at the moment to realistically accommodate the proposed movie. Despite that,D.J. Carusosays that he met with the actor before he started his work onxXx: The Return of Xander Cage. Here is what he had to say about it in a separate interview withScreen Rant.
“Paramount and I, right before I started this, were kind of working on that, and met with Dwayne [“The Rock” Johnson], and were discussing it. And that was where I would like to see, if I was gonna be involved in G.I. Joe, that franchise go. And I think there might be a chance, so we’ll see what happens.”
G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was the more successful of the twoG.I. Joemovies, grossed $375 million worldwide. That is a decent number, but it is absolutely dwarfed by even the lowest-grossingTransformersmovie, which was the first movie ($709 million). Still,D.J. Carusothinks there is a chance it could happen at some point and if Paramount thinks it could make them money, they will probably do it. Just don’t expect to see it happen in the immediate future.
