This news is a mixed bag but at least it ends on a high note. Last year we learned Sylvester Stallone and Jackie Chan would finally team up for their first movie together, an action flick (of course!!) titled Ex-Baghdad. It sounded terrible, but so what? It’s two screen legends finally going fist-to-fist. Well…no. Stallone is out, which sucks, but he’s been replaced by former WWE champion and surprisingly good actor John Cena, which is pretty awesome.
The film is now apparently untitled (anything is better than Ex-Baghdad) but going by the working title of Project X, which has nothing to do with this epic party movie. Scott Waugh (Need for Speed) is behind the camera working from a script by Arash Amel (Grace of Monaco) that follows “a Chinese private security contractor (Chan) who is called in to extract the oil workers when a China-run oil refinery in the Middle East is attacked. When he learns that the attackers’ real plan is to steal a fortune in oil, he teams up with an American — a former Marine played by John Cena — to stop them.”
Any chance Cena is playing the same character from The Marine? Because that would be amazing.
This is cool because Cena is the modern day ideal of what an action movie star is; tough, funny, and disarming. Stallone is still stuck in the old ways of playing hero, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It works for him in The Expendables and Escape Plan, which are both successful enough to spawn sequels. But the chance to see Chan and Cena pair up should be a lot of fun. The chances of Chan appearing on an episode of Monday Night Raw just shot up 1000%.
And who knows? Maybe one day we’ll get to see Stallone, Chan, and Cena team up in a movie someday? Maybe The Expendables 4? [THR]
