Since it's release in early August, The Expendables has gone on to make nearly $200 million at the worldwide box office and has allowed audiences to reconnect with their favorite action stars of all time. Because of its success, don't be surprised if imitators start to pop up in other genres and be even less surprised if it happens sooner or later. Perfect example:
Bruce Campbell recently held an interview with The Los Angeles Times where he revealed that he wants to make The Expendables version of the horror genre. But, as we can expect from Bruce Campbell, it's not exactly a normal vision:
“Yeah, The Expendables, or more like the It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World of horror. I want to get so many horror movie stars that people can’t possibly not see the movie. I want to give them other stuff to do. I want to have Kane Hodder be very particular about what he eats. I want Robert Englund to be a tough guy, like he knows tae kwon do or something. I want to find out the hidden sides of all these people. Some will play themselves, some will play alternate characters as well. I may approach Kane Hodder to play Frankenstein. He could be Kane Hodder himself fighting himself as Frankenstein. It could be crazy. It’s a silly concocted story that we hope to do maybe in a year or so. My breaks between Burn Notice have been getting tighter because they’ve been adding episodes. They’re trying to trap me like a rat in the TV world, and I might just let them. There’s a script, it just kind of blows right now, so no one’s really seeing it. We gotta work on it. Definitely shoot in Oregon all on a stage. It’s like the 300 of horror comedies. We want to make it a whole world. Someone’s gotta take Frank down for good.”
Freddy Krueger doing tae kwon do and Jason Voorhees on a diet. That sounds about right. There is no better or purer example of cult actor than Campbell and ever since he broke on to the scene in Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, he has emmassed a tremendous and well-deserved following, becoming a horror and B-movie icon. There's no better man to organize this type of project than Ash. Somebody give this man a budget.
