The fourth movie of the Expendables franchise, 2023’s Expend4bles, was a disaster in pretty much every sense, that put the final nail in the coffin of a franchise which had already seemed dead and buried nine years earlier. When it first arrived on the scene, Sylvester Stallone’s tongue-in-cheek celebration of aging action heroes was refreshingly funny and self-effacing, while giving the genre it lampooned a much-needed shot in the arm. Three rinse-and-repeat movies later, Stallone, Jason Statham and co. really ought to have left it alone, but apparently couldn’t help themselves.

The Expendables franchise was originally created by Sylvester Stallone in an effort to bring together a group of action stars from the 80s and 90s in a collaborative effort that paid homage to the films that helped define their careers. Viewers have seen Stallone share the screen with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and others over the course of all four movies, although the fourth film shifts the focus to be more centered around Jason Statham.

The Expendables has potentially run its course as a franchise after 2023’s Expend4bles, and it's a shame that the movie series will end without featuring an action star who’s always felt like a perfect fit, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The wrestler-turned-actor once itted he wouldn't mind starring in an Expendables movie, and his casting would have fixed the worst problem that the series has faced since its first film. With one notable exception, The Expendables has always been short on memorable villains to challenge Sylvester Stallone and his band of aging action heroes.

Why has The Expendables franchise crashed and burned so hard, and is a fifth movie still possible? The Expendables is one of the biggest Sylvester Stallone action franchises, with the first entry arriving back in 2010. The series sold itself on its pairing of action greats, with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, and many more teaming up onscreen for the first time. The Expendables movies arrived during a strange time for the genre, where PG-13 comic book movies were the norm, while the action films Stallone made his name on were out of vogue.

The Expendables 5 needs to break Sylvester Stallone's worst career rule and finally kill off Barney Ross. The Expendables movies were created by Stallone himself, with the intent of uniting all the great action stars under one franchise. Even with luminaries like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Jet Li and many more, the saga has never fully lived up to its enticing potential. The box-office disaster of Expend4bles may have killed the series for good too. That could be a blessing in disguise since the fourth movie was easily the worst to date.

The Expendables 2gifted Jean-Claude Van Damme with his greatest character name. The Expendables movies gathered together the most iconic actors of the action genre, from Stallone and Schwarzenegger to Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes and Jet Li. Van Damme rejected the original Expendables though, feeling the part he was offered wasn't juicy enough. He later signed on for the 2012 sequel, giving the franchise its best villain as a ruthless mercenary who is still, to date, the only antagonist to actually kill one of the team.

The last Expendables movie was a box office bomb, but there are still some ways to save the franchise. Expend4bles saw franchise star Sylvester Stallone ing the reins to Jason Statham to bring the series into the modern blockbuster landscape. But when it was released in 2023, Expend4bles was a box office flop. The sequel’s $51 million gross fell far short of its $100 million production budget (and that’s before taking marketing and exhibition costs into ). It wasn’t just a disappointment; it was an outright bomb, especially compared to the success of the previous three films.

Dwayne Johnson ing The Expendables as a villain would continue a fun franchise trend. Amazing as it sounds, The Rock has never been linked to any of The Expendables movies. Considering he's the modern-day heir to the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, he's the most obvious candidate in the world, but the series has ed him by. Considering The Expendables 4 was a huge box-office bomb that received terrible reviews, it's looking like he'll never get to his fellow action icons either.

A decade ago, Dwayne Johnson named his dream role in an Expendables movie, and it may have been just what the Sylvester Stallone action franchise needed. The Expendables was initially conceived by screenwriter David Callaham as a standard actioner about a mercenary squad. But when Stallone took over as director and rewrote Callaham’s script, it evolved into something very different. The Expendables morphed into an affectionate throwback to old-school ‘80s action movies, featuring an all-star line-up of legendary ‘80s action stars alongside some modern movie stars like Jason Statham and Terry Crews for a love letter to the action genre.