UPDATE: Check out all G.I. Joe images in our brand spanking new gallery!

Above: Lost star Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Heavy Duty, who serves as the G.I. Joe Team's heavy ordnance specialist with a passion for classical guitars and Bach. He is described as being unafraid of any situation despite heavy enemy fire. (for a larger look, head over to Coming Soon).

Paramount has released a crop of new photos from the upcoming live-action G.I. Joe flick; most of which appear to be different from those that leaked online not long ago. This seems to be a pretty easy film to market -- there's, like, 250 characters to eventually show us, and so they may as well unveil them a little at a time. Still not crazy about this whole special-ops look, but what can you do. Who's not in this film? I'd love to list the entire cast (which also includes folks like Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller and Dennis Quaid), but I think my fingers will go numb. There's a lot of folks in this thing; trust me. After the jump, check out the three other photos, as well as a little bit of info via our good friend Mr. Wiki.

G.I. Joe is due out in theaters on August 7, 2009.

Although he functions under the cinematic radar, Christopher Eccleston has become quite the television scene stealer. He made Doctor Who irresistible to a much larger audience (including me). After his abrupt departure from his role as the infamous Time Lord, he jumped into Heroes and pretty much mopped up the floor with much of the cast. After those geek roles, Eccleston has been getting all sorts of dark and topping off his role as The Rider in The Seeker: The Dark is Rising and Dr. Jekyll in New Orleans, Mon Amour, The Hollywood Reporter says he's heading for G.I. Joe. (IESB first broke this news last night.)

He's grabbed the role of "the villainous Destro" in Paramount's update of the Real American Hero. Last month, it was going to be David Murray, but unfortunately, the Irish-born actor had to back out due to visa issues. As Destro, Eccleston will be the main bad guy, straight out of the Scottish Highlands. He's the head of M.A.R.S., and is known for being both calm and cutthroat. This also means that he gets to love Sienna Miller, who will play the Baroness, Cobra's second-in-command. Okay, I think I got that right, but unfortunately, my G.I. Joe knowledge goes no further than the elaborate scene an old friend of mine had set up in a spare room with rescued figures.

Then again, I bet I'll know more soon enough. For an action movie based on an old action figure, they've set up a huge and surprising cast. Production gets going this month, and the flick will hit theaters in 2009.

It is now official: Stuart Beattie is the new screenwriter for G.I. Joe. As I told you a week ago, IESB already had the scoop that Beattie would be writing the live-action adaptation, joining newly appointed director Stephen Sommers (who IESB also had announced first) on the project. Beattie has sort of a strange resume, so it is hard to tell if he's really the best to tackle the movie. He started out as co-writer of an Australian family film about a boy and a kangaroo. Then he did a couple of badly received Australian movies before landing a gig as one of the story writers for the first Pirates of the Caribbean. After that, he scripted the mostly excellent Michael Mann thriller Collateral (his ending could have used work) and penned the adapted screenplay for the so-so thriller Derailed. Since, he's co-written a documentary about a surfing gang and had something to do with Baz Luhrman's upcoming epic Australia and the long-in-works video game adaptation Spy Hunter. The thing to look for, to see if he's worthy of an action-packed pic is next month's vampire movie 30 Days of Night.

Of course, G.I. Joe could be more of a thriller -- one for the whole family, that is -- but I guess it is doubtful. Beattie is probably just a writer for hire who will not have much to say. The basic idea for the movie has already been set up, and not just because at least three other writers have worked on drafts in the past. Paramount has given the simple plot as being about a Brussels-based, co-ed force that battles an evil arms-dealing organization. One thing I hadn't noticed the first time I wrote about that homogenized update is that the head of COBRA is double-crossing Scot. Funny, I never knew this when I was growing up, but after looking up COBRA on Wikipedia, I learned that, yes, Destro was a Scottish arms dealer. But was he head of COBRA? Well, no, that was Cobra Commander, but I at least thought he was a member of the organization. Now I'm confused, but I guess the movie is combining COBRA with something called M.A.R.S. (Military Armaments Research Syndicate), which was in fact led by Destro. Isn't it interesting how much of this specific stuff we don't pay attention to as children? I should go and check out an old episode to see how much I didn't understand the first time.