'Expendable 4' Casts Netflix Action Star as Villain

Expendables 4 has added a new action star to its ranks: martial artist Iko Uwais. Uwais stars in the Netflix original series Wu Assassins, as well as the movie The Night Comes for Us and The Raid film franchise. According to a report by Deadline, he will play a former military officer who has amassed a huge amount of power in the illegal weapons trade.

Uwais is the latest in a growing list of stars to join Expendables 4, along with Megan Fox, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Jacob Scipio and Andy Garcia. All of them will appear alongside existing stars Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture. The movie is written by Spenser Cohen, Max Adams and John Joseph Connolly, and directed by former stuntman Scott Waugh. The movie is filming now and is scheduled for release sometime in 2022.

Uwais will reportedly play "a former military officer-turned-arms dealer with his own private army" in Expendables 4. The franchise is known for taking action movie tropes over the top, and it seems this installment will be no exception. Few details on the plot have been released so far, and many of the prominent guest stars have joined the film in undisclosed roles. Some reports have described Uwais as "the lead villain."

Uwais was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he was studying the martial arts discipline silat when he met director Gareth Evans. He appeared in Evans' movie Merantau, then in The Raid - also known as The Raid: Redemption - both of which were hailed as major revivals for the martial arts movie genre. Uwais then appeared in The Raid 2 followed by an appearance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Razoo Qin-Fee, one of the gang members who ambushed Han Solo (Harrison Ford) on the Millenium Falcon.

Uwais went on to appear in titles like Headshot, Triple Threat and Mile 22 in quick succession. In 2018, Netflix cast him as Kai Jin, the lead in Wu Assassins. He is slated to reprise that role in the upcoming sequel Wu Assassins: Fistful of Vengeance.

More recently, Uwais appeared in the G.I. Joe spinoff Snake Eyes, where he played Hard Master. That movie was released in July of 2021, leaving just two projects unreleased on Uwais' IMDb page.

Wu Assassins: Fistful of Vengeance is currently in post-production, while Expendables 4 is filming now. Neither one has a precise release date yet.