Eclectic Pictures and Hollywood Ventures Group are teaming on a “female-driven expansion” of The Expendables franchise, tentatively titled Expendabelles.
Sound familiar? It is. Ever since the first Expendables hit theaters in 2010 and went on to gross north of $100 million — effectively launching a Sylvester Stallone-led franchise that has now produced a total of four movies — a handful of filmmakers have tried to crack a version starring women in the lead roles.
Back in 2014, Legally Blonde helmer Robert Luketic was set to direct a version penned by that film’s scribes, Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah, for Millennium Films that was to center on female operatives who had to pose as call girls to rescue a nuclear scientist being held hostage, a plot that surely would be eviscerated online today.
That version never came to fruition, and nearly a decade later, Millennium’s Jeffrey Greenstein told The Hollywood Reporter that one of the challenges with getting that project off the ground was “trying to find a way to justify why we’d have a woman team.”
The first Expendables starred Stallone alongside the likes of Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke and more. Bruce Willis, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, Mel Gibson, Glen Powell, Antonio Banderas, Victor Ortiz, and others turned up in later installments.
But Eclectic and HVG think they’ve found a way forward with the project, part of a new features slate of “globally commercial films” they are developing together, which was unveiled Friday at the Cannes Film Festival, where producers are in talks with distribution partners, financiers and creative talent.
Per the news, 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 stylized, action-driven cinematic event designed to expand the mythology of the franchise while standing firmly on its own,” the filmmakers tell THR, adding that it is moving forward “with the support of Lionsgate.” After all, the studio acquired the rights to the Expendables franchise late last year.
Expendabelles will be produced by Eclectic’s Markel with HVG co-founder Glenn Gainor. The executive producer team includes HGV co-founder Sandy Climan, Thirteenth Studios’ Joe Smith, Nelly Kim, Kroll, Stephen R. Foreht and John Yarincik. Eclectic Pictures and HVG are currently in the packaging phase and are “actively assembling” creative talent to fire up the spin-off film.
“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,” Markel said in a statement. “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.”
Said HVG co-founder Glenn Gainor: “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.”
The all-female action franchise has been a tough nut to crack for Hollywood producers in recent years. A few years back in Cannes, Jessica Chastain and Simon Kinberg made a splash by hard-launching their femme-focused The 355, which starred the Oscar winner opposite Penelope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger and Lupita Nyong’o. The Universal Pictures release hit theaters in 2022, but landed with a thud, grossing a mere $27 million worldwide. The 2019 reboot of the Charlie’s Angels franchise was considered a disappointment, earning just $17 million at the domestic box office and $73 million worldwide.
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