Transformers came out nearly a decade ago and that movie was important in that, it proved toys could provide fuel for a billion dollar franchise. Paramount tried to capture that same fire in a different bottle with G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra back in 2009, but it didn't quite get there. The sequel, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which brought the "franchise Viagra" known as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson into the fold, fared better and there were plans for a third movie. Unfortunately, it looks like that movie isn't happening anytime soon, which is a shame because it was recently revealed that G.I. Joe 3 would have featured a crossover with the Transformers franchise.

Disturbia director D.J. Caruso was brought on to develop G.I. Joe 3 in early 2015, but movement on the project has been pretty slow. He eventually moved on and decided to direct xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, instead. Even though it looks like his version of G.I. Joe 3 isn't going to happen, he revealed in an interview with Collider that he was indeed planning on bringing the Transformers into his movie. And a crossover will eventually happen. Here is what he had to say about it when the subject of a crossing of the properties came up.

"Well yeah ,but they're not ready to do [G.I. Joe meets Transformers] yet. That's exactly what they should do, but they're not ready to do that, because in fact the script that I was developing, the two worlds sort of collided at the end and when they read it they were like, 'We're not ready to do this yet.'... They will eventually collide those two worlds and it's probably when Mr. Bay decides he's done with Transformers...It came close, but I think what the studio was trying to do was reassess it and so now they're back to the drawing board, and we'll be talking again about it. It's a valuable franchise, [it's] not that they didn't get it right, they just wanna really get it right and see if they can push it to the next level."

Right now Paramount is pouring a lot of their resources into the Transformers franchise. Despite a perceived decline in quality with subsequent entries after the first installment, Transformers has been an insanely profitable franchise for the studio. Michael Bay has directed all of the movies, including the upcoming fifth entry; Transformers: The Last Knight. Despite critics, and seemingly a lot of fans, really not loving Transformers: Age of Extinction, the movie still made more than $1 billion worldwide. That being the case, Paramount recently brought in a team of writers to form a writers room and develop the future Transformers movie universe, which will include a Bumblebee solo movie. The thinking seems to be that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. From a business perspective, it is hard to argue with that logic.

It seems like including the Transformers in G.I. Joe 3 wouldn't just help boost the box office for the G.I. Joe movies, but it could also help breathe some new life into the giant alien robot series, which could run the risk of getting stale if Paramount can't change things up moving forward. Not to mention that G.I. Joe 3 would have had Dwayne Johnson returning, but his schedule is way too insane at the moment to realistically accommodate the proposed movie. Despite that, D.J. Caruso says that he met with the actor before he started his work on xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. Here is what he had to say about it in a separate interview with Screen Rant.

"Paramount and I, right before I started this, were kind of working on that, and met with Dwayne ["The Rock" Johnson], and were discussing it. And that was where I would like to see, if I was gonna be involved in G.I. Joe, that franchise go. And I think there might be a chance, so we'll see what happens."

G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was the more successful of the two G.I. Joe movies, grossed $375 million worldwide. That is a decent number, but it is absolutely dwarfed by even the lowest-grossing Transformers movie, which was the first movie ($709 million). Still, D.J. Caruso thinks there is a chance it could happen at some point and if Paramount thinks it could make them money, they will probably do it. Just don't expect to see it happen in the immediate future.