The development of Rambo 5 has been mighty strange. First there was talk of it being nothing like the previous four movies and instead focusing on an alien running loose, then it turned into Rambo vs. The Mexicans with Rambo battling the cartels. That wasn’t meant to be either, though, and for a while it seemed like Stallone had put the franchise in the grave, with him focusing on The Expendables and dropping any immediate plans of making a sequel. Well, that wasn’t good enough for the studios, which then toyed with the idea of making a prequel about a young Rambo with Stallone directing. Surprise, surprise – that never materialized either.

So now here we are, four years later, and some new information has suddenly popped up. Stallone’s writing partner on The Expendables 2, Sean Hood, has updated his Twitter with the message that Rambo 5 is on hold since Sly can’t decide whether the story should be a tale in the vein of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, or if it should focus on John Rambo “passing the torch” to some young hot-shot to take over the franchise:

“Rambo 5 on hold as Sly finishes Expendables 2. He hasn’t decided if R5 will be an ‘Unforgiven’ or a ‘passing of the torch.'”

The odd thing here is that the project was thought dead and now apparently Stallone is working on a script, but the update isn’t coming from Sly himself, who has used the Internet a lot for promotional purposes in the past with online Q&As and such. With press duties coming up on The Expendables 2, I’m sure Stallone is going to be getting lots of questions regarding Rambo 5 though, so we’ll know soon enough whether or not Hood is actually onto something. What direction would you like to see them take Rambo 5 in?