It looks like the oft-rumoured female-led Expendables spinoff, The Expendabelles, is finally happening.
Seriously, I have been writing about this for about fifteen years now. It was first announced when female-led spinoffs and reboots were virtually unheard of, but now it’s once again in the headlines.
The word of a female-centric Expendables spin-off, not gonna lie, Expendabelles is pretty clever, was first reported on in 2014 with Legally Blonde’s Robert Luketic set to direct (here), with a plot that was suposedly set around a group of female agents who were posing as call girls (of course lol) to rescue a nuclear scentist whose work was going to be used to build a nuclear bomb by the bad guys… I just DARE someone to make this movie today!
But now it looks like the spinoff is set to happen (again), although it’s unknown if Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, or any of the stars of the core franchise will appear.
Meet the Expendabelles, led by Meryl Streep. Possibly… wait, what?
Previously, Millennium Films’ president, Jeffrey Greenstein, said that the main difficulty for the project was “trying to find a way to justify why we’d have a woman team,” wait, so not the call girl plot? Bummer. But now Eclectic and HVG have added the spinoff to their slate of upcoming projects together.
Expendabelles will serve as an origin story set in the late 1990s during the height of Y2K-era tension and geopolitical uncertainty. The newly reimagined project — originally conceived more than a decade ago alongside Millennium by Heidi Jo Markel, Patrick Muldoon, and Julie Kroll — plans to introduce a new generation of elite female operatives in “a stylised, action-driven cinematic event designed to expand the mythology of the franchise while standing firmly on its own.”
The movie is being developed with Lionsgate, which now owns the rights to The Expendables IP.
Eclectic’s Heidi Jo Markel said of the project: “We are thrilled to finally bring Expendabelles to life alongside our incredible partners at Hollywood Ventures Group, who share our passion for reimagining this property on a much larger cinematic scale.
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“There has always been a strong global appetite for female-driven action franchises, and we believe the time is now to introduce a bold new generation of elite operatives into this universe. What excites us most is the opportunity to elevate the material by pairing it with top-tier creative talent and delivering a fresh, stylish, adrenaline-fueled experience for worldwide audiences.”
HVG co-founder Glenn Gainor added: “We see this as an opportunity to honor the DNA of what made The Expendables resonate globally, while evolving it in a way that feels both timely and commercially compelling. This is a world audiences know, but we’re introducing them to it in a way they’ve never seen before.”
With previous rumours putting Glenn Close and Sigourney Weaver in the spotlight to lead the team, it’s anyone’s guess how this franchise will continue, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
Doubt we’ll see many call girls, though.
Thoughts? I know you have them and I wanna hear ’em all.
Source: THR
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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