Sylvester Stallone Coming Back For Surprise Sequel
When we first heard about Sylvester Stallone coming back for a sequel to one of his earlier action films, we’ll admit it: our first thought was “please, God, not another Expendables movie.” Fortunately, our prayers were answered, and it looks like Sly is coming back for a franchise that very few people expected to get a sequel. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon MGM Studios is working on a sequel to Samaritan, Stallone’s overlooked action film from 2022.
Sylvester Stallone is set to appear in a sequel to Samaritan, his hit superhero movie on Amazon Prime Video.
In a world obsessed with superhero films, the plot of the first Samaritan seems almost poignant. Sylvester Stallone played an aging sanitation worker who saved a young boy from getting his butt thoroughly kicked. Afterward, the boy comes to believe that Stallone is a real-life superhero named Samaritan who disappeared two decades before after a climactic battle with his archenemy.
In case you’re wondering why you might not have heard of the first Samaritan, it’s likely because this Sylvester Stallone action film never had a theatrical release
Rather than over-the-top tights and flights, that first film was grounded by a charming magical realism. This is a world where superheroes and supervillains are real, but their appearance hasn’t completely transformed the world as it has in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, characters like Sylvester Stallone’s have become just another nearly-forgotten bit of nostalgic ephemera in a broken-down world that looks much like our own.
Part of what made that original Sylvester Stallone superhero outing so satisfying was the confident direction of Julius Avery, who charmed us this year with The Pope’s Exorcist (another film about a hero past his prime but who still has quite a bit of fight left in him). We don’t yet know if Avery will return to direct Samaritan 2, but we do know that the original film’s screenwriter, Bragi F. Schut, will be penning the sequel.
Long before Sylvester Stallone was cast as the titular lead, Schut made waves in Hollywood: he wrote the script for the first film on spec, and it caught the attention of some major studios. One of those studios was MGM, and Stallone’s Balboa Productions handled production needs. In addition to reprising his role, Stallone will once again serve as producer for this second superheroic outing.
Part of what made that original Sylvester Stallone superhero outing so satisfying was the confident direction of Julius Avery, who charmed us this year with The Pope’s Exorcist (another film about a hero past his prime but who still has quite a bit of fight left in him).
In case you’re wondering why you might not have heard of the first Samaritan, it’s likely because this Sylvester Stallone action film never had a theatrical release. Instead, it premiered on Amazon Prime and made some major waves, ultimately becoming Amazon’s top-streamed film for three weeks in a row. While critics weren’t overly impressed with the first movie, it got enough attention from Amazon Prime subscribers for the streamer to greenlight the development of a sequel.
On the face of it, this could be a real win/win for everyone involved: aging action star Sylvester Stallone gets to relive his glory days even as Amazon gets distribution rights for the kind of franchise that helps retain subscribers. Bragi F. Schut will also get more studio attention, and that’s important since The Last Voyage of the Demeter bombed, and he has spent the majority of the past few years as the story editor for the children’s television series Ninjago. Only time will tell if Samaritan 2 will be another smash hit or if, like its titular hero, it ends up getting overlooked by the rest of the world.
