Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo franchise has certainly seen its ups and downs over the years, with many proposed installments being passed up. Such is the case with a no-defunct plan for the Rambo: New Blood TV series, according to MovieWeb.
The show reportedly would have followed the son of John Rambo as its main character.
This is apparently one idea in a whole heap of scrapped projects of the years, such as a pitch of Rambo 2 featuring John Travolta as a comedy sidekick, an idea for Rambo 5 in which the character hunts genetically supped-up ghouls, and a version of Rambo 4 that later got retooled as the Jason Statham-helmed Homefront.
The story for the now-canned show would’ve centered around the relationship between father and son and this was developing prior to 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood. Original First Blood author David Morrell was even attached to the proposed show for a time.
In a recent interview, Morrell explained that he just could not get the idea off the ground.
For starters, the show would’ve featured Stallone in his early ’70s, as he is now, so he would not have been the main star of the show. Instead, Rambo’s child who has returned from fighting in one of the Gulf Wars would take up the mantle, just as Rambo had come back from Vietnam.
“Never mind that the whole point is that Rambo had been so traumatized by the war that he couldn’t bring himself to have a meaningful relationship, let alone have a child. But we’ll just forget about all that. Basically, [Rambo’s son] was going to be someone in civilian life with military skills who did… what? Right wrongs? Was he going to be a version of The Equaliser? I couldn’t figure it out. So to my knowledge, that never went anywhere,” Morrell told Digital Spy.
It may surprise you to know that despite the aforementioned New Blood ultimately being relegated to the cutting room floor, the character has appeared on TV before, in the form of the ’80s cartoon Rambo: The Force of Freedom.
Would you have liked to see some kind of Rambo franchise return for TV? leave it in the comments below.