Stallone has been a box office draw for most of his career with only the occassional hiccup (‘Stop! or my Mom will shoot?’ anyone) and his action franchise ‘The Expendables’ did great business with its 80’s action heroes given a second chance and its final on screen meeting of Stallone and Schwarzeneggar. With Sly having having written each film and directed the first the three films all made big bucks ($274m, $314m & $214m respectively).
With the last film being in 2014 there’s been constant talk about a fourth film in the franchise and it seems that Stallone may be bowing out of any further films despite him being offered a huge upfront payday of over $20 million making it the biggest in his career.
It seems though that talks between Stallone and Nu Image/Millennium chief Avi Lerner not finding common ground over various aspects of the film from director to script to visual effects are to blame for him leaving the film.
It’s not the first time they’ve disagreed over the films but they’ve always worked out their differences but not this time it seems.
Avi Lerner admitted that,’We’ve got disagreements with Sly, but we’ve had them for over a year and a half. Right now, each one has opinion. We agreed on 95% of things, but there are certain things in production we don’t agree on. I don’t think it’s over, but write whatever you want. In my opinion, it’s not dead’.
Quite how this will affect any fourth film remains unclear and who knows what’s happened to a rumoured all female action star version called, ‘The Expendabelles’.
