RAMBO III II: REVENGEANCE

A recent quote from Sly:

“I’m getting ready for that. I’m starting to work out. I’m going to be appropriately vicious and all that stuff, but intellectual. A killer with a heart. Smart, yet stupid. Tall, yet short. Broad, but thin. You know what I mean. We’re going to try to cover all the boundaries.”

Despite saying for years that he was working on a script for “Rambo V,” Sylvester Stallone revealed in a new interview with Variety that he has no intention of reprising his role as the iconic military war hero.

“The heart’s willing, but the body says, ‘Stay home!,’” Stallone, 69, explained in this week’s cover story. “It’s like fighters that go back for one last round and get clobbered. Leave it to someone else.”

Stallone noted that he was content with where 2008’s “Rambo IV” left the character, which he first played in 1982. “You know when you realize there’s nothing more to pull out?” Stallone says. “As an action film, I was very satisfied that it dealt with the Burmese situation. It had one foot in a current event, the longest civil war in history, 65 years at that time. It was so brutal, which civil war is, I was shocked they even gave me an R-rating. I didn’t want to compromise. I said, ‘This is probably going to be the last decent film of this genre that I’m going to do as a solo act.’ When that was accomplished, I never felt the same willingness to do it again.”

He added: “There’s nothing left. When they asked me to do another ‘Rambo,’ I said, ‘If I can’t do better than I did last time, and I can’t, then why’?”

He’s also not involved in the “Rambo” TV series, which is in development at Fox and focuses on the character’s son. “I don’t want to cast aspersions,” Stallone said, “but it’s delicate to try to replace a character with his son. I’ve seen the son of Flicka, the son of Tarzan, the son of King Kong, the son of Godzilla. It’s a very difficult premise.”

Sylvester Stallone is attached to reprise his role as former Green Beret John Rambo in Rambo V, which Millennium Media will bring to Cannes this week.

Production on the fifth instalment in the 36-year franchise that famously launched with First Blood in 1982 is scheduled for a September 1 start and will encompass London, Bulgaria, and the Canary Islands.

Millennium Media is financing Rambo V and handles worldwide sales rights. Avi Lerner and Kevin King serve as producers and Matt Cirulnick wrote the screenplay. A director will be announced shortly.

Stallone’s return to action in the long-running series finds him living in a ranch in Arizona, deeply troubled and wrestling with PTSD as he picks up casual work wherever he can.

When long-time family friend and estate manager Maria informs Rambo that her grand-daughter has gone missing after crossing into Mexico for a party, he sets off with her to find the youngster.

What ensues is a violent descent into hell as Rambo uncovers a sex-trafficking ring. He teams up with a journalist whose half-sister has also been kidnapped and must deploy all his skills to save the girls and bring down a vicious crime lord.

Millennium Media’s Cannes sales slate includes Rod Lurie’s Afghan War title The Outpost, which is set to begin shooting on August 15 and stars Scott Eastwood, Orlando Bloom, and Caleb Landry Jones.