Sylvester Stallone opened up about his plan to revive one of his signature characters with the help of AI – and the immediate pushback he received.
The 79-year-old actor told the Bingeworthy podcast Thursday that his collaborators were skeptical about his ideas focused on using AI to compose an 18-year-old incarnation of the John Rambo character for a prequel – with him in the starring role.
‘Everyone thought I was crazy,’ Stallone said.
The three-time Academy Award nominee said that AI is advanced enough to provide an accurate rendering of the character, prior to the time his canon story started with the 1982 film action/thriller First Blood.
‘AI is sophisticated enough to go through Saigon to see him at 18 years old and basically use the same image – so it isn’t as big a stretch,’ Stallone said.
Noah Centineo will play the title character in the rebooted film, which is tentatively titled John Rambo, with Jalmari Helander directing, and Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani penning the script.
Sylvester Stallone, 79, opened up about his plan to revive one of his signature characters with the help of AI – and the immediate pushback he received. Pictured in NYC September 16
Stallone, pictured in 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II wanted to use AI to reprise the role
Stallone said career move will be challenging for the actor, 29, who has past been seen in Black Adam, To All the Boys I Loved Before and The Recruit.
‘It’s very, very hard,’ Stallone said.
The New York City native cited a specific role he played in his career to illustrate the difficulty of an actor stepping into an already established role.
‘He may do a stellar job, but you’re overcoming this because I went through it with Get Carter,’ Stallone said of his 2000 remake of a 1972 film Michael Caine originally played the lead role in.
The action film star added: ‘Everyone loves the original, and then you’re always fighting that prejudice.’
Production was slated to commence on the action film early next year in Thailand, sources told Deadline.
The storyline of the movie will focus on a teen Rambo as he fights in the war in Vietnam War.
In all, the five movies in the Rambo franchise – also including 1982’s First Blood, 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1988’s Rambo III, 2008’s Rambo and 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood – have made more than $800 million in worldwide revenues.
Stallone has been ‘aware of the project but was not involved,’ sources told the outlet.
The character’s canon story started with the 1982 film action/thriller First Blood
The actor was pictured with wife Jennifer Flavin and daughters Sophia Rose Stallone and Scarlet Stallonen at an August 28 SiriusXM event in in Amagansett, New York
Stallone previously spoke with The Hollywood Reporter in 2022 about the prospects of reviving the character.
‘I think it’s going to happen,’ he said. ‘I wanted to do it like a Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam, where you drop young Rambo in there and he’s this outgoing guy, football captain, and then you see why he becomes Rambo.
‘But what they want to do is a modern-day story where I pass the torch. That’s getting close.’
Stallone can currently be seen on the Paramount+ series Tulsa King. The show also features Martin Starr, Jay Will, Vincent Piazza, Garrett Hedlund and Dana Delany.
