Sylvester Stallone appears to have caught the superhero bug in a big way since joining the cast of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 as Stakar Ogord, and the post-credits scene of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s cosmic adventure has set him up for a return in Vol. 3. He’s also reuniting with the filmmaker for The Suicide Squad, having joined the ensemble very late in the day, although his role remains under wraps.
Of course, the veteran action star will headline Samaritan as well, which hails from Overlord director Julius Avery, who recently signed on to helm Universal’s Van Helsing reboot with James Wan producing. The gritty superhero thriller follows a young boy who accidentally stumbles upon Stallone’s legendary crimefighter, who’d vanished decades previously and was long since presumed dead.
That’s about all we know in regards to the plot, but more and more information will no doubt be trickling down as Samaritan gets closer to its June release date, having originally been scheduled for last November before production was halted for seven months as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, which at least gave Sly the time to work on his Director’s Cut of Rocky IV.
This week, the first official image from Samartian was revealed, and while it doesn’t exactly offer much in the way of excitement, it certainly gives off an Unbreakable vibe, as you can see below.
With a talent like Sylvester Stallone in the lead, this movie could go one of two ways. We’ll either get the soulful dramatic actor who picked up an Academy Award nomination for Creed and brought some real pathos to Rambo: Last Blood before the requisite third act carnage, or the one-dimensional macho man who bludgeoned his way through the Expendables and Escape Plan franchises. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see which one we end up with.