It can be confidently said that the era of Expendables looks quite done after the latest movie in Sylvester Stallone’s franchise crashed badly. The latest and fourth installment has been weak in every aspect and has attracted a lot of criticism from all around due to several factors. Looks like the performance of the latest movie has also put the franchise’s female-led movie in question which was planned for a long time.
Plans for a female-led spin-off to the ensemble action franchise started long ago in 2012. Female-led spin-offs are a modern trend with many notable franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean moving that way. Sandra Bullock’s Ocean’s 8 is also a very successful project in this genre. But the fate of Expendables looks bleak as the latest reports around the female-led spin-off are disappointing.
When Sylvester Stallone started The Expendables franchise, it was developed to pay tribute to the action of Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s. It was soon a huge name in itself for bringing the major action veterans in the industry under the same roof. Even though some notable names like Jackie Chan never agreed to share the screen with so many other stars, the first three movies were highly successful.
Similar to what George Clooney’s Ocean’s franchise did with Ocean’s 8, Stallone’s film series also planned to have a female-led spin-off. Several reports in 2012 stated the tentative title to be The Expendabelles with actresses like Cameron Diaz, Milla Jovovich, and Sigourney Weaver attached to it. However, it felt like the movie got lost somewhere in development as we never heard about it again. Recently, when ComicBook.com asked Expend4bles producer Les Weldon about the status of the spin-off, he didn’t give a hopeful reply.
“I am not sure that there’s been talk, lemme just put it that way. It hasn’t really moved any closer to fruition. And I tell you, scheduling these kind of movies is incredibly difficult. And even for us, it happened to be a little bit easier, whatever, 2008 to 2009 when we did the first one simply because we had an idea of the action stars we wanted to bring in, and they all were eager to jump in and participate.”
Weldon also added that it is difficult to kick off a large project from scratch with so many names onboard. Scheduling conflicts and commitment issues pose huge problems in these types of projects. But now with the condition of the latest installment, it can be said that an Ocean’s 8-Esque Expendables movie doesn’t seem a possibility soon.
The poor CGI, disappointing cast, and the absence of most of the original names from the first two parts contributed to the movie’s failure. The movie scored the lowest opening in the franchise as it only collected a sum of $8 million in its domestic debut.
Currently, Expend4bles is running with a worldwide total of $33.9 million. Along with the not-so-positive word of mouth involved, it wouldn’t be a mistake to consider it as a major disaster. Even though the presence of Megan Fox makes us think more about the female-led spin-off, the franchise looks finished. It does not feel like the Jason Statham franchise will try to revive itself with another attempt, but as of now, there’s nothing in the near future.
