Jean-Julien Baronnet, the producer associated with three adaptations of Ubisoft's vastly popular video game properties - Jed Kurzel's Assassin's Creed, the Rabbids Invasion TV series, and the Ghost Recon: Alpha featurette, has reportedly joined the upcoming movie adaptation of yet another video game series - the Duke Nukem feature film that will be produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes.
According to Variety, Gearbox Software's Vice President of Business Development Sean Haren and Baronnet have been recently meeting with screenwriters to start developing Duke Nukem. "Duke is exactly the kind of very blunt character that we need in the world today,” Baronnet said. In Haren's opinion, Duke has the potential to be another Deadpool in terms of being able to break the fourth wall.
Back in March, Duke Nukem Producer Andrew Form revealed that John Cena (Trainwreck, Bumblebee) would play the video game adaptation's controversial lead. "We don't have a script yet, so that is confirmed at this point but if he reads the script and he doesn't like the script I'm sure there's ways that he could pull out, but right now he's our guy," Form said CinemaBlend over 9 months ago.
Since his big debut in a 1991 2D platform game developed and published by Apogee Software (renamed 3D Realms in 1996), Duke Nukem has starred in 19 video games as the titular character.