Sylvester Stallone to have a supporting role in Escape Plan 2

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

If the 2013 film ESCAPE PLAN had been released twenty or twenty-five years earlier, it would have been a huge event picture: an action thriller that serves as a team-up film for two of the biggest action stars of all time, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arriving after the stars had reached senior citizen status, ESCAPE PLAN wasn't quite the sensation that it might have been if it were made decades earlier, but it did okay. With a budget of $50 million, it pulled in a worldwide total of $137 million at the box office.

That's good enough for the producers at Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films, a company that makes a whole lot of modestly budgeted action flicks, to give the green light to a sequel.

It's not clear if Schwarzenegger will be making an appearance in ESCAPE PLAN 2 (not the official title), but Stallone will be back as Ray Breslin, the prison-testing owner of a security firm. Breslin will not be the lead character this time, however, as Stallone is taking a step back into a supporting role for this one. The actor who will be the star of the sequel has yet to be named, but at least Stallone isn't being recast like he is for RAMBO: NEW BLOOD.

It also hasn't been revealed who will be directing the follow-up, but Miles Chapman, who came up with the story for ESCAPE PLAN and co-wrote the screenplay with Arnell Jesko, has returned to write part 2.

ESCAPE PLAN's success in China is the main factor that has gotten the ball rolling on ESCAPE PLAN 2. Since the first film's popularity in China has gotten this one financed, it will also be filming in China.

Pre-production on ESCAPE PLAN 2 begins on January 15th, with filming to commence on March 15th. In addition to China, the movie will be filming in Ohio, where several Emmett/Furla/Oasis movies have been made.

In case you missed ESCAPE PLAN, here's the synopsis:

One of the world's foremost authorities on structural security agrees to take on one last job: breaking out of an ultra-secret, high-tech facility called "The Tomb." Deceived and wrongly imprisoned, Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) must recruit fellow inmate Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to help devise a daring, nearly impossible plan to escape from the most protected and fortified prison ever built.