Your Favorite Chris Could Be Joining Danny McBride’s ‘G.I. Joe'

“You think I want this? It just… happened,” yelled Ben Vereen at James Avery as he made excuses for not taking Will Smith on a cross-country road trip meant to mend their troubled father/son relationship. I think about that line and delivery quite often. Not in the context of the show, mind you. It is a very serious moment, and Avery, Vereen, and Smith treat it as such. The moment has lodged itself in my brain for decades, to the point that I have the line saved on my phone to send to folks as a response. Today, I’m using it for a similar reason.

Just yesterday, I mentioned how Danny McBride will direct a G.I. Joe movie that he is writing. It was a major jump forward for the project, and now, we find ourselves in a “when it rains, it pours” type situation. The rumor mill has begun swirling about who will be in McBride’s feature directorial debut. One of the names being floated is Walton Goggins, someone I also hoped would be part of the film, especially given his personal and professional working relationship with McBride. But there is another name as well.

Yes, Chris Pratt is rumored to join the film as well. It’s not known which part he would play, but one can safely assume that he’s being courted for the lead. There’s definitely a world in which he is introduced and then killed, ala Deadpool’s team in Deadpool 2 (or a better example that I could think of if I had a bit more coffee), but I’d say it’s more likely that he is someone like Duke, or maybe a character that hasn’t been given the spotlight in one of the films yet.

I’ll admit, I bristled at this news for all the obvious reasons. That’s why I opened with that Fresh Prince quote. However, this is the first casting choice I’ve heard for Pratt in some time that actually sounds like something that fits why I liked him in the first place. Having Chris Pratt do his Star-Lord thing under a director like Danny McBride could be very funny, even if McBride claims the film will be more suspenseful. It’s not like Pratt would be coasting, either. He’s done some of his best work as Star-Lord, including Guardians 3. The potential is there, especially under McBride.

There’s also the idea that they could be playing against expectations. Pratt and Goggins are both rumored, so maybe I’ve got their roles reversed. McBride could lean into everyone’s inherent distaste for Pratt and cast him as the villain, and make Goggins the hero. The biggest question there is whether or not Pratt would be willing to be that self-aware (which, honestly, doesn’t seem very likely).

It also could just be a rumor, but given David Ellison’s focus on pushing Paramount’s franchises (he’s so happy with Sonic that he’s having the producer in charge of those movies tackle TMNT), it makes sense that they’d want to attract a big star to a big movie. Whether or not it works is another question, but I’d be lying if I said Pratt would be bad in a Danny McBride action-comedy. That sounds like a much better fit than Garfield.