Following the poster reveals earlier in the week, The Expendables 4 showed the first footage from Sylvester Stallone’s swansong as part of the action movie ensemble during Lionsgate’s presentation at CinemaCon. Under the official, spell-checker-bothering title of Expend4bles, the latest addition to the franchise will return to its R-rated best as Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Coture are joined this time by Megan Fox, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Andy Garcia and Iko Uwais among others for another round of guns, explosions and a rising body count that could include Stallone’s character of Barney Ross.
Having started out in 2010 as a movie boasting the first time old action heroes Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger had appeared in the same film together, the franchise went on to include many other genre veterans should as Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris and Jet-Li. Now, Stallone is ready to go out with a bang and hand over the franchise's future to his co-star Statham.
In the small amount of footage shown by Lionsgate on Thursday, the studio spent a little time building up the movie with stats and footage from past entries, informing the audience that the first three films in the franchise have seen 7000 dead bodies and half a million ammunition rounds. “This life, it’s not for everyone,” Stallone’s voice-over said at the start of the presentation, and then a quick cut of booms, bangs and blasts teased that those original stats are going to significantly increase with the fourth installment. As seen in the posters, Stallone is given an “and…” credit in the cast list, once again suggesting that his role will be quite fleeting in the movie.
Sylvester Stallone Signs Off From the Franchise in Expend4bles
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
The Expendables franchise was originally Sylvester Stallone’s big starring role, but now he is ready to say goodbye to the series with one last outing as Barney Ross. Filming on the movie kicked off late last year, and Stallone appeared to be done filming his role in a matter of days. All of this suggests that Stallone will not be the big feature of the movie, and most rumors have suggested that his character will be killed off in the opening part of the film, which would fit with the short filming time.
The future of The Expendables looked on rocky ground following the third movie, which dropped down to a PG-13 rating and saw its profits also drop as it became the lowest earner of the franchise, a good performance by Expend4bles could secure future movies’ financing as well as the TV series that has been said to be in the works. Since the pandemic, many movies have struggled to reach their full potential and Expend4bles could very easily end up in that category with so many other big movies releasing this year. While the film doesn’t currently have a set release date, wherever it sits in the 2022 line-up, grabbing box office attention is going to be a more significant challenge than the characters have faced so far.