The Expendables movies is one of the few, modern-day instances of a big-budget, R-rated action franchise, with four entries to date. Sylvester Stallone had a famously lean few years during the early 2000s, where many of his films bombed, and a few more or less went direct to video. After reviving his career with 2006's Rocky Balboa and 2008's Rambo, he sought to create another series for himself. Seeing there was a gap in the market for the kind of old-fashioned action films he and his contemporaries used to headline, he decided to collect a supergroup of genre icons for one movie.
