Expendabelles, the “female-driven” spinoff of The Expendables, is officially back on a decade after the first attempt to get it off the ground crashed and burned.
The Sylvester Stallone-led action movie franchise began life in 2010 with the first The Expendables movie, starring the former Rocky and Rambo actor alongside the likes of Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger. Its success spawned multiple sequels, the latest of which was 2023 box office bomb, Expend4bles.
Now, Eclectic Pictures and Hollywood Ventures Group are working on Expendabelles, The Hollywood Reporter said, in yet another push to get the spinoff off the ground. But it might actually happen this time; the idea here is to tell an origin story set in the late ‘90s starring a new generation of elite female operatives in “a stylized, action-driven cinematic event designed to expand the mythology of the franchise while standing firmly on its own.”
Casting has yet to be announced, and we don’t have a release window yet, but we do have a lot of enthusiasm from the filmmakers involved. “There has always been a strong global appetite for female-driven action franchises, and we believe the time is now to introduce a bold new generation of elite operatives into this universe,” Eclectic’s Heidi Jo Markel said.
“What excites us most is the opportunity to elevate the material by pairing it with top-tier creative talent and delivering a fresh, stylish, adrenaline-fueled experience for worldwide audiences.”
Back in 2014, while promoting The Expendables 3, Stallone admitted the question of what goes into a female-biased spinoff was a tough one. “With The Expendabelles, we’re in uncharted waters. To put all women together, will that really work? Do you have to put in some women that are actually really known to be tough — other MMA fighters [like Ronda Rousey who appears in The Expendables 3]? Or are the Expendabelles really part of a divorce, with Sigourney Weaver as my wife and she’s inherited half of the Expendables?”
At the time, The Expendabelles was set to start shooting early 2015 and was slated for release later that year, but it never materialized, with Weaver confirming her departure from the project and The Expendables 3 having a franchise-worst showing at the box office.
Meanwhile, there’s no confirmation that The Expendables 5 will happen, after the poor commercial performance and critical mauling of Expend4bles. Lionsgate recently acquired the rights to The Expendables franchise, which you’d imagine it did with another mainline sequel in mind. (This is the same deal that saw Lionsgate pick up the new John Rambo movie starring Noah Centineo.) The question is, will Stallone, now 79, appear in any future The Expendables movie? Or will Lionsgate recruit fresh blood and go down the reboot route instead?
Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
