The Rock In The Expendables 4? Not Likely

There has been some talk recently of The Rock joining The Expendables 4.  It came from a Reddit AMA session where The Great One said, or mused, that he’d do it only as an unstoppable villain.  Recently, Sylvester Stallone said he’d like The Rock to make that appearance.

Such talk is unlikely and optimistic.  The Rock mentions the franchise here, in this video, in a more formal setting, and basically says ‘fuck no’.  Read between the lines.  Can you blame him?

The Rock is one of Hollywood’s biggest action stars right now, if not the biggest.  For a given project, if he wanted, I’m sure he could demand $20,000,000.  The budget of The Expendables 3 was labelled as $90,000,000.  To you and me, that’s an Avi Lerner number.  The real budget was probably significantly less.  Simply put, they can’t afford to hire The Rock.  At least not without significant changes.

If you were to bring in The Rock, you’d have to make sacrifices.  That means Sylvester Stallone taking a huge pay cut, who supposedly takes $10 million or more, and Avi Lerner reaching deeper into his pockets.  Stallone also takes up a lot of screentime, as does Jason Statham, who does not command as much money but you can be damned sure minutes on the screen are a feature of his negotiations.  These things would have to change.

 You’d have to give The Rock the right pitch.  The Rock had a point on his Reddit reply – an Expendables villain needs to tear shit up, and not with a goofy smile.  You’d have to convince him that he’s not going to appear in a 100 minute slapstick movie featuring the comedic adventures of Jason Statham and Sylvester Stallone.  Think 130 minute movie with $130 million budget, with Rocky culling the chaff (Couture, Crews, all young Expendables) with extreme prejudice.  And maybe he’d talk.  They should’ve planned this the minute first Expendables was a significant success, to be honest – to hunt a guy like this.

But again, highly unlikely.  Especially considering the fight that The Expendables 3 has this coming two weeks.  Will The Expendables 4 go ahead at all and if it will, will it be downgraded significantly?  If it does, it’ll have a reputation to restore and one way of doing that would be to hire the ‘franchise saver’ and rate that fucker hard R.  Pander to him.  It won’t happen though.

Will it?