Stephen Sommers claims himself to be a fan of screenwriter Stuart Beattie's work and sources are telling us that Paramount Studios has hired him on to bring the GI Joe Team to life!
Back in 2005, the studio hired Paul Lovett and David Elliot to pen GI Joe. Earlier this year Skip Woods took a crack at the “Real American Hero” and delivered a new script that brought the beloved toy line to a whole new level.
We have just received word that Paramount has hired Stuart Beattie to pen a new script for the potential franchise.
Yep, that’s right Stuart Beattie who has writing credits on the Pirates trilogy, 30 Days of Night, wrote a kick ass script for Spy Hunter, Collateral and some of the best scripts in Hollywood of the last ten years.
I’m excited, I really like Stuart’s past work and if my memory serves me right he was involved with GI Joe back 8-10 years ago when Threshold had the rights to the property. Yep the same production outfit that put out the Mortal Kombat films back in the 90’s.
A few days ago I was talking with a producer friend of mine about GI Joe and he mentioned how the best thing that Paramount could do would be to hire Stuart to write the script. Funny how this town works, what are the odds? Hmmm...
So the big question that arises is will Beattie use anything from the Elliot/Lovett and Skip Woods scripts?
I read both scripts and they both were worlds apart. The Skip Woods draft was very ballsy and as most of our readers know it included a character that was not part of Joe team, British Operative Alex Mann A.K.A Action Man.
The script had same great Tech aspects and was very “Bourne-Like” and was written as a Rated R film which was sure to be changed in future drafts but it never got the chance.
Yes it did have issues with the characters and it did not rely on much of the original source material and Hasbro wasn’t satisfied with the script. Although there were some great action scenes and good aspects to this script but it wasn’t the GI Joe that we grew up with.
The Elliot/Lovett script on the other hand was GI Joe 100% but that is where the problem was. I read that script and there was no doubt that it was Joe…a cartoon GI Joe. That script had all characters that we all grew up with including Cobra, Destro, the Baroness, Duke, Storm Shadow, Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Hi-Tech and every action figure that you ever owned but it really did feel like I was reading a 90’s video game adaptation like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat and it didn’t feel real whatsoever. At least the Skip Woods draft had a real world feel to it.
So what is Stuart Beattie using from these scripts? We are being told that this is a page one rewrite. Stuart is starting from scratch and we might be setting the Joe team in the near future around a major military conflict but will stay away from any recent real world terrorist events.
How about Alex Man AKA Action Man? Looks like he will be gone, this new script is set to be 100% GI Joe, it will revolve around the characters we all grew up with fighting Cobra, Destro, the Baroness and Storm Shadow.
When do they expect to have this new script ready? Six to eight weeks. Pre-production is expected to start by October-November and production to start early ’08.
Due to the new Joe's height, the old vehicles are pretty much unuseable when a ****pit or door is involved.
