'Expendables' Spin-Off About Jason Statham's Character Teased By Sylvester Stallone

Is anyone out there clamoring for more Expendables? At least one person – Sylvester Stallone. When he's not busy teasing potential Rocky and Rambo sequels, Stallone is keeping the Expendables dream alive, and in several different social media posts, the actor and filmmaker has teased a fourth Expendables movie, and potentially given away that it's going to be a spin-off devoted to Jason Statham's character Lee Christmas.

So far there have been three Expendables movies, and none of them have been very good. Which is a shame, because the basic concept – a bunch of famous action stars team up! – is solid. But the execution has been severely lacking, even by B-grade action movie standards. Movies that bring together Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, and more, should be fun, damn it! But every Expendables movies so far has lacked anything resembling fun.

Perhaps the fourth time will be the charm. A new Expendables movie has been talked about since at least 2014, when Pierce Brosnan revealed he had been approached to appear in the potential sequel. But there's been almost no movement on the project – until now, it seems. A couple of weeks ago, Sylvester Stallone took to Instagram to post a picture of a skull ring. It looked like this:

The caption to the image reads: "Just finished the designing [sic] the new ring for EXPENDABLE 4 It's a little heavy, but it'll definitely put some muscles on your fingertips."

Then, just the other day, Stallone posted again, saying, "Off to shoot the spinoff of EXPENDABLES ( Temp. working title is , Christmas Story ) in OCT."

That "temp. working title" is a big clue as to what the film might be about. No, this probably won't be a Christmas-themed Expendables sequel where the Expendables fight Santa (although that sounds great to me). Instead, the film is likely to focus on Jason Statham's character, who is named Lee Christmas. Does this mean the movie is going to give up on the core team-up concept behind the previous films and focus solely on Statham? Perhaps.

If Expendables 4: A Christmas Story is filming in October, who is directing it? There's no info out there at the moment. A few rumors are swirling around that both Duncan Jones and D.J. Caruso were offered the gig, but these rumors come from shakey sources and I don't put much stock into them. Still, Stallone says the movie is filming, and while he's been known to exaggerate from time to time, I'm going to assume this is the real deal.

Which again asks the big question: does anyone want a new Expendables movie, and if so, do they want one that potentially gives up on the established formula and focuses on one character? I guess we'll have to wait and see.