Source:Notfabio

September 8, 2009

Last Monday, it was announced that Nu Image/Millennium Films had given the green light to a fifth installment in the "Rambo" franchise. The trades said that the "storyline for the fifth film revolves around Rambo fighting his way through human traffickers and drug lords to rescue a young girl abducted near the U.S.-Mexico border."

According to Sylvester Stallone in several communications with Ain't It Cool News, that storyline is way off. Instead, Sly gave the site a rundown of what to expect instead. Several days later, the site followed up with an official synopsis for the film that is being passed around, and that's where it gets interesting.

You see, Stallone has owned the film rights to the novel "Hunter" by James Byron Huggins for about 10 years, and it looks like he's adapting that book as the next "Rambo" film. Here's the synopsis for the newly-titled Rambo 5: The Savage Hunt:

John Rambo could track anyone - or anything - on earth. Now the military desperately needs him for a mission that his ultrasensitive instincts tell him he should refuse. A beast is loose somewhere north of the Artic Circle. It has already decimated a secret research facility and annihilated a squad of elite military guards. And the raging creature is headed south toward civilization, ready to wreak bloody devastation.

It's a job that Rambo and his 22-year-old hunting partner, Beau Brady, can't turn down, but they and a team of highly-skilled special forces kill team discover that the prey is a terror beyond their wildest imagination - a half-human abomination created by a renegade agency through a series of outlawed genetic experiments. It has man's cunning, a predator's savageness, and a prehistoric power that has transcended the ages. And even if Rambo and Beau survive its unrelenting hunger for human blood, they'll still have to contront the grim reality that it may have grown immortal.

And here is the official description of James Byron Huggins' "Hunter":

One of Hollywood's hottest action-film writers, James Byron Huggins is a master at keeping the action rolling and the pages turning. Here, the author of Cain ("may be the thriller of the year" -- BookPage), unleashes a lightning-quick tale that pits a man born out of his time against the future's deadliest creation.

Nathaniel Hunter could track anyone -- or anything -- on earth. Now the military desperately needs him for a mission that his ultrasensitive instincts tell him he should refuse. A beast is loose somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. It has already decimated a secret research facility and annihilated a squad of elite military guards. And the raging creature is headed south toward civilization, ready to wreak bloody devastation.

It's a job that Hunter can't turn down, but he soon discovers that his prey is terror incarnate, a half-human abomination created by a renegade agency through a series of outlawed genetic experiments. It has man's cunning, a predator's savageness, and a prehistoric power that has transcended the ages. And even if Hunter survives its unrelenting hunger for human blood, he'll still have to confront the grim reality that it may have grown immortal.

Are Stallone's rights to the novel expiring soon to where he has to make a film soon? We may never know, but here is a poster that Stallone told AICN is debuting at the Toronto Film Festival.