David Ellison’s Paramount is offering yet another disgraced Hollywood talent a second chance, as Max Landis, embattled screenwriter and son of director John Landis, has been tapped to develop a new film treatment for G.I. Joe.
The studio is looking to revive one of its long-dormant film franchises, and has tapped Landis, alongside Danny McBride to work on two separate scripts for a new feature film adaptation of the Hasbro toy brand. While studios often commission multiple writers for major feature adaptations — sometimes combining drafts or developing separate versions. But bringing on a controversial figure for a film based on a toy brand? Slightly less so.
During the height of the #MeToo movement, Landis was accused of sexual and emotional abuse by several women in a 2019 exposé. His manager subsequently dropped him and his projects in the works died, but no charges were ever filed against the screenwriter.
Now, under CEO David Ellison, Paramount Skydance (soon to be Paramount Skydance Warner if the planned sale goes through) have shown a pattern of attempting to rehabilitate troubled industry figures. Skydance notably hired former Pixar chief John Lasseter after he admitted to workplace “missteps” that made employees feel “disrespected and uncomfortable.” More recently, Paramount agreed to distribute Rush Hour 4, signaling a major studio return for its director, Brett Ratner, following 2017 misconduct allegations.
Landis is known for writing unsolicited scripts for films and found early success with 2012’s Chronicle, a superpower thriller directed by Josh Trank that starred a young Michael B. Jordan. He also wrote Bright for Netflix, the big-budget fantasy film that starred Will Smith and Joel Edgerton.
Meanwhile, McBride is known for acting and co-creating shows like HBO’s Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals, as well as co-writing the recent Halloween trilogy for Blumhouse alongside director David Gordon Green.
For what it’s worth, it’s probably a safer bet to go with McBride when it comes to developing a new G.I. Joe film. After 2021’s spinoff film Snake Eyes, the franchise could use a bit of levity and take itself less seriously. (Controversies aside, Landis work often leans more into edgy and dark takes on genre filmmaking.) After all, G.I. Joe is first and foremost a kid’s brand spanning toys, comics, animated series, and films. Despite being centered on an elite military team battling the terrorist organization Cobra, the less political associations behind the scenes of the film and studio, the better, let the internet start drawing a bunch of obvious parallels.
