With the news of a developing TV series, it looked as if The Expendables' cinema career may have ended at part three. Not so, according to Sylvester Stallone, who over the weekend confirmed December's rumours that Expendables 4 was underway.
Stallone told his Facebook followers that he's about to start working out for "the next Expendables, [which is] gonna be great, fingers crossed! We're gonna do our best and I think we've got some really great attitude going, some great ideas. I think everyone's expecting something different and we're gonna give it to 'em."
The last we officially heard about the film was in October, 2015, when studio Nu Image announced that a fourth instalment had been made possible by Chinese funding. Almost half of Expendables 3's total worldwide box office haul of $200m came from China, with a relatively meagre $40m from the States.
"What seems to work in their favour in China, is that these movies are good old-fashioned shoot ’em up entertainment," said executive producer Steven Paul back then.
Whether that's still the deal remains to be revealed, as does the specific cast and the director. Stallone directed the first Expendables himself, with Simon West coming in for Expendables 2 and Patrick Hughes on Expendables 3. The regular Expendables team in front of the cameras, meanwhile, has been Stallone, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture and Jet Li – plus Arnold Schwarzenegger and (for the first two) Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes and Antonio Banderas last time, and some younger whippersnappers including Ronda Rousey.
We can probably safely assume that Stallone will be leading the screenwriting team, however. And if Stallone is getting into Exopendables shape as of now, we can probably expect shooting (in both senses) before too long. More updates will undoubtedly follow in the near future.