Yahoo News Here's why the planned Rambo TV series never happened
John Rambo is heading back to the big screen, with a fifth film starring Sylvester Stallone as the war veteran in the works.
But back in 2013, before Rambo 5: Last Blood was announced, there were rumblings of a TV series spin-off, with Stallone reprising the character.
All then went quiet on the Rambo front until earlier this year... so what happened to the television show?
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, author David Morrell – who originally created the Rambo character for his 1972 novel First Blood – revealed that he'd worked with Miramax on the project, but wasn't satisfied with the way development was heading.
Above: David Morrell on set with Sylvester Stallone
Though Stallone would've featured in the series, it would've been in a supporting role, with a new actor stepping in to play the lead role of John Rambo's son, also a war veteran.
"Rambo would be in his early '70s now, as Sylvester is," Morrell explained. "So you're not going to have a television series with a man of that age as the star. It's just not currently what people watch.
"So what they were going to do was have Rambo have a child. And this child was in one of the Gulf Wars, and had returned, and now he was coming back from war the way Rambo had come back [from Vietnam].
Related: Rambo creator is "sad" that "exciting" original idea for fifth movie was scrapped
"Never mind that the whole point is that Rambo had been so traumatised by the war that he couldn't bring himself to have a meaningful relationship, let alone have a child. But we'll just forget about all that.
"Basically, [Rambo's son] was going to be someone in civilian life with military skills who did... what? Right wrongs? Was he going to be a version of The Equaliser? I couldn't figure it out.
"So to my knowledge, that never went anywhere."
With that project never having materialised, the closest thing we have to a Rambo television show is the animated series from the 1980s, which ran for 65 episodes.
For the uninitiated, Rambo: The Force of Freedom saw a happy-go-lucky John lead a team of heroes against the evil organisation SAVAGE (short for Specialist-Administrators of Vengeance, Anarchy and Global Extortion).
"What can you do?"laughed Morrell. "If somebody sells a property to films, then that control is gone.
"I knew, for me, selling the Rambo movie rights was a big risk. You could have a film that's really terrible – and we know of authors who've had real embarrassments made on the screen.
"I feel I've been treated pretty well. I've got no reason to be embarrassed with [the movie of] First Blood.
"Then things moved on, So I just became kind of stoically adjusted. I thought of the novel as one train track, and Rambo publicly as another train track. Sometimes I joke that I'm Rambo's father, and the character grew up and did stuff that I have nothing to do with.
"But at least the cartoon series isn't malign. It wasn't evil. Not that I'm suggesting that the films are, but there's [other] franchises that really aren't what you want to be associated with.
"So on balance... I thought that it was cute. Let's say that the cartoons are cute."
The Rambo Trilogy is available now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-Ray and digital download.
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