A scrapped idea for Rambo 5 is finally being turned into a movie, it just won't be part of an existing franchise. Sylvester Stallone is set to star in and produce an adaptation of the novel Hunter by James Byron Huggins, which the action star has held the rights to for some time. While it may not be John Rambo in the driver's seat, we'll still get to watch Stallone duking it out with an inhuman beast in the Arctic, which sounds like it could be a blast.

According to a new report, Sylvester Stallone's recently formed production company Balboa Productions is finally getting to work on Hunter, which has been gestating for nearly a decade. Sylvester Stallone purchased the rights to the book in 2009, ten years after it was initially published. At the time, the idea was to turn it into a new adventure for Rambo, but that never materialized. Now that Rambo: Last Blood is finally filming, it looks like the star decided it was time to do something else with the story.

Hunter centers on a man named, unsurprisingly, Nathaniel Hunter, who is an expert tracker that is recruited by the military, who desperately need him for a mission. An inhuman beast is loose somewhere in the Arctic Circle. The half-human abomination was made by a renegade agency and it is already wreaking havoc. It's up to this expert tracker to stop the beast, or else it will present a huge danger to a great many people. On the one hand, it's easy to see why John Rambo would be the man for that job. On the other hand, it also would have really been a dramatic shift in tone for the franchise. Perhaps it's better off as its own thing.

Even though this sounds like it could be interesting, don't get too excited. Sylvester Stallone first has to finish filming Rambo: Last Blood. This report also notes that Balboa Productions is additionally working on a movie called Samaritan, which is described as a dark and fresh take on the superhero genre that Stallone is also attached to star in. It's likely that movie will enter production first. So there are a couple of projects in the way before Hunter will really get rolling.

Chinese financier Starlight Cultural Entertainment, which has an overall deal with Balboa Productions, is set to finance the project, in addition to several others. At the present time, the company is looking for a writer to pen a new draft of the Hunter screenplay. There is no director attached and it sounds like this is in the relatively early stages of development as its own thing now that it's not attached to another franchise. We'll be sure to keep you posted as more details on the project are made available. This news was first reported by Deadline.