While Sylvester Stallone is having some legal dramas off camera with Warner Bros. he’ll be serving up more crime and punishment in Escape Plan‘s sequel…
2013’s Escape Plan saw Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger joining forces for a prison break, when Stallone’s character Security Expert Ray Breslin is wrongfully imprisoned in a Maximum Security Prison he helped design. His only chance at escape is by joining forces with another inmate played by Schwarzenegger. Despite the film being the first official team up as co-leads, (Arnie’s cameos in The Expendables don’t really count), the film received mixed reviews but ended up grossing over US$137 million internationally with more than US$40 million of that coming from its China release.
Though Arnold looks unlikely to return, Stallone is reprising his role as Ray Breslin for the sequel Escape Plan 2: Hades, which is being co-produced by Beijing based Leomus Pictures. It will have Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Dave Bautista and Ip Man 2‘s Huang Xiao-ming as co-leads. 50 Cent reprises his role from the first film and Jesse Metcalfe, Jaime King, and Wes Chatman fill out the cast. Miles Chapman who wrote the first film, also wrote the screenplay for the sequel while director Steven C.Miller (Marauders, Extraction) helms the movie, with veteran stunt coordinator James Lew (Luke Cage, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven) as the film’s action director.
Such is the level of confidence, there’s already plans for a third Escape Plan movie, with Stallone confirming his attachment to the project. Stallone has been busy with other issues and has filed suit against Warner Bros. for ‘fraud and dishonesty‘ over studio accounting practices related to 1993’s Demolition Man,. This also comes at a time when Stallone’s involvement with The Expendables franchise may also have come to an end after creative differences between himself and producer Avi Lerner.