After almost 50 years in the business, veteran action hero Sylvester Stallone finally got round to forming his own production company in March of last year. Even though the first movie under the Balboa Productions banner doesn’t arrive until Rambo: Last Blood hits theaters this coming September, the 73 year-old already has big plans for the upstart venture.
Stallone and his wonderfully-named co-founder Braden Aftergood are looking to emulate the low-risk/high-reward model of Blumhouse Productions, which has seen the horror-centric studio become arguably the biggest name in the genre, with Aftergood looking to turn Balboa Productions into the home of the action movie.
“My goal is for us to be the go-to place for action. I appreciate that statement is grandiose, but Blumhouse has done an extraordinary job owning the horror space. There is no reason why we can’t own the action space in a similar way.”
It’s certainly a solid idea on paper. Over the years, Blumhouse have produced a huge number of low-budget genre movies that have reaped massive rewards at the box office including the Paranormal Activity, Insidious and The Purge franchises along with smash hits like Split, Halloween, Glass and the Academy Award-winning Get Out.
Stallone also spoke about the kind of projects his company would be looking for, and how Balboa Productions could be a place for filmmakers to get their big break in an era where there is so much content available over so many platforms.
“I like stories that deal with modern-day mythology, which is pretty much what Marvel is. You take situations like the trope of the loner, the stranger in town, and you watch him cope with the forces that be. To me, that’s very intriguing. That plays out in the genesis of the Western, all the way out to the horror genre. Places like Amazon, Netflix, HBO, whatever, are inundated to the point where they’re, not cynical, but they’ve heard so many pitches that to actually excite them you have to set your hair on fire and pitch while you’re ablaze. I can imagine them sitting there seven hours a day, hearing only this. I can’t get a hamburger without getting pitched Rocky XI.”
It all sounds good in theory, but outside of Creed and Creed II, Sylvester Stallone hasn’t had the best track record for picking great projects in recent years. After all, he slammed Escape Plan 2 as the worst movie he’s ever been involved in, but went and made a third one anyway. It’s easy to say that you want your company to follow the precedent set by one that has already had so much success, but it’s an entirely different challenge to pull it off.