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The Sylvester Stallone Cinematic Universe may be coming, courtesy of the studio behind John Wick
Lionsgate, the studio that brought you John Wick, now controls both The Expendables and Rambo after a recent deal
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Thanks to the success of John Wick, Lionsgate has become home to the contemporary face of action movies — but the studio is clearly thinking bigger, if recent moves are anything to go by. Could the studio be quietly planning to build a brand new cinematic universe based around the collected works of Sylvester Stallone?
The question is raised by a recent deal that saw Lionsgate not only take on worldwide distribution rights to the upcoming John Rambo, a reboot of the 1980s Rambo franchise in which Stallone played the titular Vietnam veteran, but also become “lead studio and production partner” with Rambo owner Millennium Media on any potential Rambo TV shows or feature films. The same deal also saw Lionsgate taking the rights for any derivative works based on Stallone’s late-era franchise, The Expendables, including “films and television series, video games, immersive experiences and other cross-platform extensions.”
John Rambo is currently in pre-production from director Jalmari Helander, who helmed the over-the-top revenge flick Sisu to no small success in 2022. (He’s also behind the sequel, Sisu: Road to Revenge, set for release in the US on November 21.) Noah Centineo (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, next year’s Street Fighter) is expected to play the title role.
Lionsgate laying claim to two of Stallone’s three core franchises feels like a deliberate statement — the third, Rocky, has a somewhat contested ownership status, but Amazon MGM Studios has a fairly strong grip on it for now. It’s possible that Lionsgate is looking to simply cement itself as the place to go for action movies with no larger ambition, but the possibility of mixing the two Stallone franchises together to create something even bigger is surely on the table for discussion at the very least.
Now all we need is for Lionsgate to negotiate the rights to Over The Top before it’s too late, just to complete this particular puzzle. We can only hope…!
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