Rambo 5 gets the green light
The punch-drunk Rocky may have finally wobbled into the sunset, but it seems Sylvester Stallone isn’t quite ready to send his second-most famous character out to pasture.
A fifth Rambo movie has officially been given the go-ahead, Variety reports. The storyline this time has John Rambo “fighting his way through human traffickers and drug lords to rescue a young girl abducted near the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Though the self-titled fourth film in the series, released last year, grossed a relatively modest $42 million in the U.S. and Canada, its overseas take was considerably higher. Variety pegs it at $113 million, though BoxOffice.com says that figure represents the film’s total worldwide gross, including $70 million overseas.
Stallone, who turned 63 in July, can at least be credited with keeping the movies’ settings timely, if not downright prescient. Last year’s entry was set in war-torn Burma. The preceding film in the series, released in 1988, took place in Afghanistan.
Regardless of the setting, Stallone will have a tough time ratcheting up the series’ escalating kill count. In figures collated by the movie website FirstShowing.net, that statistic has risen from 1 in the first movie to 69, 132 and a 236 in last year’s entry. That works out to 2.59 kills per minute (3.04 if you don’t count the time taken up by the end credits).
The number of sex scenes in each film, meanwhile, has remained constant: 0.
Rambo No. 5 is scheduled to start shooting next spring. The Internet Movie Database reports that Mickey Rourke is rumoured as Stallone’s co-star. It gives a projected release date of 2011.
Before that, Stallone will show up as star, writer and director of The Expendables, whose cast includes Rourke, Jason Statham and Jet Li, as well as a veritable who’s who of ’80s genre stars: Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts and Steve “Stone Cold” Austin. Those luminaries portray a band of mercenaries trying to overthrow a dictator in South America. It hits theatres April 23.
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