Sylvester Stallone revealed that an AI Rambo prequel that he was working on was ultimately scrapped. John Rambo has been one of Stallone’s most iconic characters; Stallone first portrayed the character in 1982’s First Blood, then reprised it in four additional movies, the most recent being 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood.

The character of Rambo is set to return to the big screen, but with The Recruit star Noah Centineo playing John Rambo. The new movie, currently тιтled John Rambo, is set to be a prequel to First Blood, following Rambo’s time with the Green Berets in Vietnam.

However, Stallone was working on a new Rambo project of his own. In an interview with ScreenRant’s Liam Crowley for Tulsa King season 3 (premiering September 21), the topic of the Rambo prequel came up, and Stallone said he had the idea to use AI to help recreate his younger Rambo before the John Rambo team took the baton. Here’s what Stallone had to say:

Sylvester Stallone: I wanted to do the first AI… not retroactive… but I wanted to rewrite history of the earlier Rambo because I wanted Rambo to be the nicest guy in the school, the valedictorian, the prom king, and all that stuff.

And when he goes to Vietnam, he thinks it’s going to be a three-week hit-and-run, and you see him being tortured and captured, his friends murdered, one thing after another, and [his] life in Saigon. And that’s how I became the way I became, but originally I was bon vivant–that kind of thing. And I thought, “We could do this with AI,” but [we] procrastinated too long and they took it over and, I hope, you know, good luck.

What This Means For The Rambo Franchise

Stallone has been actively involved in the Rambo franchise from its inception. In addition to starring in the movies, he co-wrote the screenplay for First Blood, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo III, directed and co-wrote Rambo, and co-wrote Rambo: Last Blood. However, despite his own newly revealed intentions, Stallone is not involved in the upcoming John Rambo prequel.

This is a changing of the guard for the Rambo franchise, which has been defined by Stallone for more than 40 years. However, to keep the Rambo franchise going indefinitely, a new actor would always eventually have to take over the role.

The good news is that Stallone does not seem upset about that. As shown in the above quote, he wishes the new production luck.

Our Take On Stallone’s Scrapped Rambo Prequel

While it is definitely weird that Stallone appears to have no involvement in John Rambo, it would be hard to imagine that an AI-supported Rambo prequel would have been embraced with open arms.

As far as AI has come as a tool, including the ability to de-age actors, using it for a whole movie to create a young John Rambo seems like it could have been pushing it. Not to mention, people sometimes simply have a visceral reaction to the use of AI in movies and other forms of art.

It would have been interesting to see where Stallone wanted to take the character for his Rambo story, but I think there’s plenty of reason for fans to be excited with Centineo taking over the role, with Sisu‘s Jalmari Helander in the director’s chair.