During an interview with Collider, xXx: Return of Xander Cage director DJ Caruso advised his take on G.I. Joe 3 would have included a crossover with the Transformers film series. Caruso was in talks to direct the third installment in early January 2015:
On a Joe/Transformers crossover: “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.
On not giving up on his idea: “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.”