There is a lot of excitement for the G.I. Joe movie that will likely hit theaters in summer of 2009. I don’t really get it, but then I never played with Joe and his cohorts. Now if they ever make a full movie of those little green army men, I’m there. Still, Hasbro has to sell toys, so G.I. Joe is the toy selling commercial…uh, movie of the moment. As we noted last week Stephen Sommer’s will be the director and since you can’t have a movie without a script, at least in theory, they’ve hired Stuart Beattie to go ahead and write it.

Variety says that Beattie will write a script that pits the Brussels-based Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity (G.I.J.O.E) against Cobra, the bad guy arms dealers. The G.I.J.O.E. team will be international and co-ed, because, let’s face it, co-ed is more fun to look at than just plain ed. It’s not clear if Beattie will use the previous drafts written by other writers over the years or start with a fresh piece of paper in his typewriter.

No one seems concerned that an American icon like G.I. Joe has been turned over to an Aussie writer. Hopefully he knows that U.S.A. ass-kickers are the ass-kickingest ass-kickers in the entire world and won’t let limp-wristed Frenchman have too big a part of the “international” team. Beattie has previously written the first Pirates of the Caribbean and the Michael Mann movie Collateral, so he certainly has decent credentials. I’m sure as long as the CGI fur is a flying, it will please the Transformer primed public on the future. Hopefully a free “G.I. Joe Lootbag!” will be included with each ticket.