Any Sylvester Stallone fans looking forward to seeing him reprise the role of Barney Ross for the fourth Expendables movie will be disappointed to hear that the action icon has exited the franchise due to creative differences with Image / Millennium Films boss Avi Lerner.
According to Deadline, Stallone was set to pocket the biggest upfront payday of his career for The Expendables 4, but had a series of disagreements with Lerner over the director, script and qualititive elements of the film, and was concerning about delivering an underwhelming final product.
While Deadline is reporting that Sly has walked, Lerner seems hopeful that a compromise could be reached, telling the site that: ““We’ve got disagreements with Sly, but we’ve had them for over a year and a half,. Right now, each one has an 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.”
Will you be disappointed if Stallone doesn’t return for The Expendables 4? Can the franchise continue without him? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
Ian Walker says
Stallone is (not) expendable
Katie McClure says
Is this April fool’s joke?
Ian Walker says
I thought it was but now I think it is genuine – sure it will get resolved though
Gary@FlickeringMyth says
It’s genuine I’m afraid. The news broke last night on Deadline.
Mawteen says
What would make Sylvester leave the Expendables 4? The Expendables 3 was really bad.. So is the next one going to be even worse?
Chris Ward says
Sly has already gone on record saying The Expendables 3 was too much of a compromise so my guess is he would want to make a violent 18-rated movie like the first Expendables and the studio wants something more ‘family-friendly’ like the third one. My feeling is a fourth film would suffer without Sly in the lead role but this is Hollywood and money talks so I guess they’ll be eyeing up someone like Dwayne Johnson to take it over if they go ahead without him.