The Expendables franchise brought action greats of the past back for fun romps, had a third entry in 2014, and, now, footage of the latest installment has been previewed at CinemaCon.
Rebecca Rubin of Variety revealed that comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, who was leading Lionsgate’s presentation at the convention, described the film as “more violent than Will Smith at a comedy club.”
Of course, unless you’re living under a rock, you’ll know that Maniscalco is referencing Smith striking Chris Rock after he made a joke about his wife at this year’s Academy Awards, launching a 10-year-ban from the awards, a resignation from the Academy and an infinite amount of think pieces.
A poster for the film, officially titled EXPEND4BLES, shows all the returning faves with a very clear and pointed tagline: “They’ll die when they’re dead.”
Things do die when they are dead, yes. Who knew the Expendables would become an Ingmar Bergman-style arthouse film about mortality?
New additions include Eddie Hall, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Tony Jaa, Sheila Shah, Jacob Scipio, and Levy Tran with Iko Uwais, of the hit Indonesian The Raid films, will play the villain.
The film will also return to an R rating after its predecessor Expendables 3 went in a more PG-13 direction, back in 2014. It’ll hope to avoid repeating history, as the Expendables 3 ended up getting leaked in its entirety just weeks before its cinematic debut.
Expendables 4 has had some controversy in its development though, with members of the Greek military alleging they were not paid overtime for their role as extras in the film.
No release date has been penned in yet for Expendables 4, but it’s due to release at some point in 2022.