Robert Luketic Directing 'The ExpendaBelles'

While Avi Lerner and Millennium Films were once reportedly on the hunt for a female director to call the shots on The ExpendaBelles, they're going to settle for the guy who directed Legally Blonde. Robert Luketic is now set to make the all-female riff on The Expendables. And the choice makes a certain sort of sense, as the film was scripted by Legally Blonde writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith.

The real news here might not be that director hire, however, but the film's plot, which is below.

The ExpendaBelles sounds like an Andy Sidaris movie. Sidaris was the guy who made films like Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Picasso Trigger, late-'80s/early-'90s fluff in which bikini-clad women would get into scraps with dudes in tank tops, maybe through the machinery of a plot that involved stolen weapons or intelligence.

So here's the Sidaris-worthy plot of The ExpendaBelles, from Deadline:

When America's Navy SEALs are wiped out trying to penetrate the island lair of a deadly despot who has captured one of the world's top nuclear scientists, it becomes clear that there is no such thing as the right man for the job and that this is a mission so impossible that only women can handle it. The only way in: some of the world's deadliest female operatives must pose as high-class call-girls shipped in by private plane to satisfy a dictator–and instead save the scientist and the day.

We all know that plot setup is tired and stupid, but perhaps the saving grace is that it is penned by comedy writers. Could this thing be meant as an action-heavy spoof, and might it end up being legitimately funny? it sounds like a spoof. There's no way to know just yet, and until we see who is cast (no one is on board yet) it'll be difficult to tell.