“The heart’s willing, but the body says, ‘Stay home!’ It’s like fighters that go back for one last round and get clobbered. Leave it to someone else,” Sylvester Stallone said earlier this year when asked about reprising his character of Rambo. “There’s nothing left. When they asked me to do another ‘Rambo,’ I said, ‘If I can’t do better than I did last time, and I can’t, then why?’ ” That’s sound reasoning, but that won’t stop Hollywood from giving the iconic ’80s action hero a new coat of paint.
READ MORE: The Essentials: 10 Great Sylvester Stallone Performances
The character is getting a reboot with Nu Image/Millennium Films developing “Rambo: New Blood.” Ariel Vromen (“The Iceman,” “Criminal“) will direct the Brooks McLaren-penned project, though there are no details on the plot just yet. But there have been plenty of ideas about what to do with the property over the last little while. A couple years back, a “No Country For Old Men“-style movie with Rambo facing off against Mexican drug cartels was floated. And last fall, it was announced that Fox was developing a TV show based on the character, also called “Rambo: New Blood,” but that went nowhere.
We’ll see if this project gains any steam, but the concept is to make Rambo into a James Bond-like figure that can be reinvented with new actors, and that makes sense in terms of brand longevity. Whether or not anybody wants that many Rambo films remains to be seen. [THR]
