'G.I. Joe' TV Series Centered On Lady Jaye In Development At Amazon
Hollywood is desperate to squeeze all it can out of G.I. Joe, on both the big and small screens.
The latest example: Lady Jaye, an undercover operative within that universe, is now getting her own live-action G.I. Joe TV show, which is in the works at Amazon. Adrianne Palicki (Fright Night Lights) played that character in the 2013 movie G.I. Joe: Retaliation, but it's unclear if she'll be back to reprise the role or if someone else will be stepping into Lady Jaye's...um, fatigues? Leather jacket? She's had a bunch of different looks over the years, so let's go with leather jacket.
Deadline reports that Paramount Television Studios, eOne, and Skydance Television are behind this Lady Jaye-centric, live-action G.I. Joe TV show, which they're calling "a standalone story centered around Jaye, which will also connect to the larger G.I. Joe universe." Erik Oleson, the showrunner of the upcoming second season of the Amazon original series Carnival Row, will create and showrun this new Lady Jaye show and will executive produce alongside Lorenzo DiBonaventura, who produced the live-action films.
But there are still some unanswered questions about what exactly that "larger G.I. Joe universe" entails. Will it include the Stephen Sommers movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? Will it incorporate the events of G.I. Joe: Retaliation? Or will it ignore those two feature films and instead serve as a bridge to Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, the upcoming movie that stars Henry Golding in the title role, and the planned follow-up film that is "not quite a sequel but rather an expansion to take audience goers deeper into the world of Joe"?
Lady Jaye was first introduced as part of the Joe squad in the 1984 animated series. As far as her skill set goes, it sounds like she's G.I. Joe equivalent to Marvel's Black Widow; the character's Wikipedia page describes her as "Airborne and Ranger qualified, and an expert with the M-16, M-1911A1 auto pistol and reflex crossbow. She is also an accomplished actress and fluent in several languages. She has a knack for impersonation, right down to the subject's voice and mannerisms."
I personally have not thought about G.I. Joe: Retaliation since I saw it eight years ago, but if you want to – and I'm not necessarily recommending that you should! – you can watch this bizarre edit of several of Lady Jaye's biggest moments from that film below: