Stallone Talking To Seagal For Expendables 3

Following our chat with the cheerfully equivocal Jackie Chan last week, there's been a little more activity on the Expendables front. Sylvester Stallone, in one of his occasional fits of tweeting, has confirmed that Wesley Snipes is definitely showing up for Expendables 3, and that Mickey Rourke is returning. He's also indicated that he has The Raid in his sights and, perhaps most surprisingly, that he's been talking to Steven Seagal after all.

We totally called Snipes a while ago, and Stallone now says he "Talked to Wesley today... he cannot wait to fight to the top again!". The news of Rourke, who sat out Expendables 2, comes in the form of "Mighty Mickey is back..." Sly also puts the call out for "a young Sigourney Weaver..." We haven't finished with the old one yet!

But Seagal is a curveball. Stallone himself said there was "No Seagal, sorry" back in March, and legend had it that Seagal, perhaps the most obviously missing Expendable to date, was boycotting the franchise because of an ongoing beef with producer Avi Lerner. Maybe that's now been ironed out, or perhaps it was always nonsense, because suddenly Sly was "Calling Seagal this morning", and a couple of days later had "Just talked to Steven in Moscow*... Sounds great and says he wants to be in EX3, if the part fits".

As for last year's exhilarating slice of Indonesian tower-block carnage, Sly muses that he's "Thinking about raiding The Raid". Does he just mean stylistically? Or is he talking about going after the likes of Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian for the actual cast? Unclear, but says Sly, "The Raid was an excellent film... We believe we can do better... Raising the bar..."

Raising the bar from Expendables 2? Good idea! Writing and pre-production are currently ongoing, with Red Hill's Patrick Hughes set to call the shots this time. Production is slated to start in August, for release sometime in 2014.

*Where he's been on a peculiar tour for some months.