Like every long running film franchise, Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo franchise has seen more movies passed on than made, and that also included a planned Rambo: New Blood TV series which would have followed the son of John Rambo. Over the decades since Stallone’s mercenary first exploded on the big screen, there have been pitched movies such as Rambo 2 featuring John Travolta as a comedy sidekick, an idea for Rambo 5 that would have seen the character hunting a genetically engineered monster, which was dropped after the pitch was panned, and there was also a version of Rambo 4 that was later recycled as Jason Statham thriller Homefront. Of course, before 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood came about, it seemed like Stallone was done with one of his most famous roles, and that was when discussions began about a series featuring ex-Navy SEAL J.R., Rambo’s son.
While Stallone was on board as executive producer, there was a big question hanging over how much he wanted to be part of the project. The story was to explore the relationship between the father and son, but the development of the series was so much of a non-starter that nothing was really known about it until it was officially shut down in 2018. According to the author of First Blood David Morrell, he began working on the project but it appears no one could manage to get the idea off the ground, not even Rambo’s creator.
“Rambo would be in his early ’70s now, as Sylvester is,” Morrell explained in an interview with Digital Spy. “So you’re not going to have a television series with a man of that age as the star. It’s just not currently what people watch. So what they were going to do was have Rambo have a child. And this child was in one of the Gulf Wars, and had returned, and now he was coming back from war the way Rambo had come back [from Vietnam].”
Morrell continued, “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.”
While that series didn’t make it anywhere near screens, Rambo has appeared on TV previously in the form of an 80s cartoon called Rambo: The Force of Freedom, which ran for 65 episodes. Morrell didn’t seem to be particularly pleased about the existence of that show either, commenting, “Sometimes I joke that I’m Rambo’s father, and the character grew up and did stuff that I have nothing to do with. But at least the cartoon series isn’t malignant. It wasn’t evil. Not that I’m suggesting that the films are, but there’s [other] franchises that really aren’t what you want to be associated with. So on balance… I thought that it was cute. Let’s say that the cartoons are cute.”
With Stallone now finally done with the franchise, who is to say that there won’t be another chance for a live-action TV series sometime in the future. Streaming platforms have paved the way for many more cinematic TV projects to find a home on the small screen, and who knows if we are likely to see a complete reboot of the franchise as a long-form series with for a whole new generation. With the current boom in 70s and 80s revivals, there could be no better time for Rambo to join the ranks and make a transition to television. This comes to us from Digital Spy.
Source: movieweb.com