Sylvester Stallone Teases ‘Rambo’ Return in New Instagram Post

Sylvester Stallone has been talking about a fifth Rambo movie for years, and dropped a fresh tease this weekend on Instagram.

Stallone posted a photo of himself as John Rambo, the troubled Vietnam Veteran he has already played four times. “… A SAVAGE RISING! … soon,” he wrote.

The Rocky star first played Rambo in 1982’s First Blood, based on David Morell’s novel of the same name. It was followed by Rambo: First Blood Part II in 1985, Rambo III in 1988 and Rambo in 2008. Since the release of the fourth film, work on a fifth one has started and stopped several times over the past decade.

Work resumed in May, when Screen Daily reported that Stallone was working on a script where Rambo heads to Mexico to rescue a friend’s daughter from a violent cartel. According to Screen Daily, Stallone is working on the script with Matt Cirulnick and The Expendables‘ Avi Lerner is producing. Lerner’s Millennium Media took the project to Cannes. A director was set to be announced “shortly,” but there has been no developments on that front.

Even though no director has been named, a report last month claimed filming would start in Spain on Sept. 1.

Stallone also hinted at a Q&A last month that he doubted Rambo 5 would happen.

“We’re trying to come to terms on locations and things like that. Hopefully, it’ll work out, if not then there’s, you know, other things down the road,” Stallone said.

News that Stallone still wants to make a Rambo movie should be surprising to anyone following the project. Back in 2016, Stallone an incarnation of Rambo 5 called New Blood was reportedly in the works, without Stallone’s involvement. In 2015, Stallone himself said he was done playing Rambo while doing press for Creed.

“There’s nothing left. When they asked me to do another Rambo, I said, ‘If I can’t do better than I did last time, and I can’t, then why?’” Stallone told Variety at the time.

Another project called Rambo: Last Blood in 2014 fizzled out and a proposed 2013 Fox TV series never came to fruition.

Oddly enough, another Rambo project is having trouble getting off the ground. Millennium is also spearheading a Bollywood remake in India, but director Siddharth Anand recently told the Indian Express the project is being delayed. Filming will not start until next year and it might not hit theaters until 2020.

In the meantime, you can catch Stallone in Creed II on Nov. 21. He also recently starred in Escape Plan 2: Hades.

Photo credit: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images