Both G.I. Joe and Transformers are owned by Hasbro, and both of their film franchises are released by Paramount, which means that you could combine them into a single movie if one were so inclined.
Well, Hasbro and Paramount are so inclined.
After the movie was first teased at the end of the most recent Transformers movie, Rise of the Beasts, it is now official. Paramount revealed at CinemaCon this week that they are in fact working on a movie that will feature both the Transformers and the members of G.I. Joe.
There are not many more details about the project than that at this point, although Steven Spielberg is involved as an executive producer, along with longtime Transformers and G.I. Joe film series producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Michael Bay, Tom DeSanto, and Don Murphy.
READ MORE: 10 Good Trailers For Bad Movies
The move comes at a time when both film franchises are at a low ebb on their own. Rise of the Beasts was released last summer, and drew some of its storylines from the Transformers: Beast Wars toys and animated series. It wound up grossing $439 million in theaters, the lowest total for the Transformers live-action movies to date.
But that was a blockbuster compared to the last G.I. Joe movie: Snake Eyes, which grossed just $40 million worldwide when it premiered in theaters in the summer of 2021. Admittedly, that was still the pandemic, and the box-office grosses of a lot of releases were impacted during that time. But still: $40 million for a big franchise like G.I. Joe is not good. (Neither were the film’s reviews.)
That could explain why Hasbro and Paramount are now looking to try combining the two. Audiences seem to have grown tired of these series on their own.
12 Forgotten Movie Prequels
These prequels were made. Then they were forgotten. Or in some cases, people never knew they existed in the first place.