Action Jackson Is 30

30 years ago, Action Jackson was playing in cinemas.

This was supposed to be Carl Weathers’ own franchise and indeed, it was a financial success — it took $65 million+ from cinema and VHS sales from an $8 million budget.  However although Weathers was hoping for a franchise, a sequel did not happen.

Weathers said “Lorimar sold the lot to Sony and sold the library to Warner Bros., and that was that. It never resurfaced again, unfortunately.”

Carl Weathers later called the film:

A creation that came about when I was doing Predator and talking to Joel Silver, who loved blaxploitation movies. Joel said, “Well, you know, why don’t you put something together?” So during that time of shooting down in Puerto Vallarta, I created this story and came up with this guy — or at least this title —Action Jackson. And Joel found a writer [who] wrote the screenplay, and that was it. We got it made.

The film has a good cast, along with Weathers we have Sharon Stone, Robert Davi and somewhat of a Predator reunion with Bill Duke and Sonny Landham.  Dangerous Passion, another Weathers movie from 1990, was released in some territories as Action Jackson 2.