We were going good there for about a week, having not heard another crazy update on what’s going on with the story of the next Rambo film in seven whole days… better than four big updates on the project in one week.

Rambo V: The Savage Hunt, as it’s officially called, is now about Rambo fighting some genetically altered half-human bloodthirsty maybe-immortal abomination that he, his partner “Beau” and a bunch of Black Ops dudes have to go in and hunt down.

Got it so far? If you’re confused or upset by this, Stallone says that this is “actually possible” so just relax, will you?

For our next installment of ‘Rambo 5 Week’ – this is the fourth update on the project in the last 8 days – we have for you the (crazy) official synopsis for Rambo V: The Savage Hunt.

Here’s the story so far: Last Monday we reported that Rambo 5 was given the green light and it would start production in the spring. The story would apparently follow John along the U.S.-Mexico border as he annihilates drug lords in an attempt to rescue a kidnapped daughter.

A few days later, Harry at Ain’t It Cool News spoke with Rambo himself, Sylvester Stallone, and found out that what we heard about the story wasn’t accurate. The fifth installment would instead follow the aging warrior in the Pacific Midwest, back where he originated, where he’d lead a black ops team to take down some sort of supersoldier(s) born out of a failed experiment in a secret military lab in the area.

Last night, we reported on breaking news for the next installment of the Rambo franchise, which centered on the story of Rambo 5 in addition to its title and first teaser poster. From what we heard, the idea for the fifth installment seemed a little odd and it resulted in some confusion and mixed reaction. This provoked Sylvester Stallone himself to quickly address the confusion and explain himself what the film’s story is (and is not) about.

Originally, I had this latest news written in as a hefty-sized update to last night’s post but I wanted to expand on it, now that we have a more concrete concept of Rambo 5’s plot.

Sly read the reader feedback to the news last night on several sites that over-emphasized the science-fiction aspects of the story for Rambo V, so he left a message with Harry Knowles at Ain’t It Cool News, who first broke the news, to clear up the details.

Read on for what Sly’s explanation of Rambo V: The Savage Hunt…

On Monday, Screen Rant relayed the great news of Rambo 5 being given the greenlight. It was reported at the time that the story of the next Rambo adventure would follow the bad-ass to the Mexican-U.S. border where he’d tear down a bunch of human traffickers and drug lords to rescue some kidnapped girl.

That part was secondary to seeing Sylvester Stallone back to gruesomely destroy the opposition.

Now comes word that Rambo 5 has a new title, a new poster, and the story we thought we knew isn’t right at all. Apparently, it instead will be about stopping some super-soldier experiments with the Rambo franchise taking a sci-fi twist.

Read on for the details…

I really enjoyed last year’s Rambo which saw an older and more bitter Sylvester Stallone join a team of mercenaries to lay down the pain in war-torn Burma. Their mission, besides destroying a ton of bad guys, was to rescue aid workers.

He was as bad-ass as ever and at the end, many fans just wanted more. Fortunately, ever since that movie banked $113 million worldwide on a $50 million budget, there’s been talk of another installment.

Just when we thought the legendary action character John Rambo was put firmly to rest last year with Rambo, it seems that Stallone wants to give the character yet another outing.

He had this to say:

Yeah, we are doing another ‘Rambo,’ but the conflict is whether to do it in America or a foreign country.

It just goes to show – you can’t keep a good man down!

It looks like Sylvester Stallone is set to return to the role of John Rambo in… you guessed it, Rambo 5.

Lionsgate has appointed former Universal honcho Alli Shearmur to run the studio and one of the films in their production pipe line is Rambo 5.

Much like Rambo/ John Rambo (depending on where you live) it will be written and directed by Stallone. The fifth film in the mega-action franchise will shoot in Bulgaria and is expected to go before cameras reasonably soon.

You can definitely list this one under, “What the…?!?”

Incredible Love, the first Bollywood film to be made at Universal Studios, has lined up the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator franchise), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky and Rambo series), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns and the upcoming sequel Man of Steel) and Linda Hamilton (also from The Terminator series) to appear.

But don’t get ahead of yourselves excited at the prospects of them in full-on action-mode blowing stuff up. They’re only walk-on parts (i.e. playing themselves).

Over the past few months there have been rumors that Sylvester Stallone would revisiting (again) the role of John Rambo.

I’d never put much stock in these rumors as Stallone appears to have a full slate ahead of him with the Death Wish remake and the ever gestating Edgar Allan Poe biopic.

However, you can’t keep a good action hero down and with Rambo’s $100 million worldwide gross Harvey Weinstein wanted to continue the franchise and keep the iconic character on the bigscreen.

It would seem that he got what he wanted (much to the disapointment of Mick Jagger).

Are you freaking kidding me? Meet the Spartans is number one at the box office this weekend?

It’s estimated that it brought in $18.7MM vs second place Rambo at $18.2MM. Cloverfield fell 68% from last weekend – a second week drop of that magnitude usually means that a movie has received horrible word of mouth advertising. I knew it was going to split audiences big time into love it or hate it, but it seems that everyone who was going to see it went on opening weekend.

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: If you’re a fan of the previous films, Stallone’s awesome new Rambo will blow you away.

After having seen some of the Rambo reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes and the overall rating of only 35%, I fully expected to be disappointed by Sylvester Stallone’s second revisiting of an iconic character. So you can imagine that it came as a complete shock to me when I ended up loving it.

Rambo opens with real footage of the nightmarish abuses that are currently going on in Burma. It’s very disturbing and at the very least I believe that Stallone is hoping that this will draw attention to what’s going on over there with the military murdering innocent men, women and children on a daily basis.

From there the film cuts to John Rambo in the Thai jungle (Thailand borders Burma) where he is out with a local man wrangling cobras. The local town’s main attraction involves shows were men taunt cobras, pythons and other dangerous snakes. It seems that he has been living there for a long time – living a spartan, simple existence among the local people.

Thanks to Cinematical for pointing out that the official site for the upcoming Stallone movie Rambo has been updated.

Above is a look at what the site looks like and you can click on the image to visit it. As Cinematical points out, although the framework is laid out in a really cool Flash interface, there’s not a whole lot yet on the site beyond what we’ve already seen. There are a lot of “coming soon” sections right now, but it looks like there will be a lot of cool games and the like shortly, so keep an eye on it if you’re interested.

And yes, the final title is just plain old Rambo. The film opens on January 25th, 2008.

Maybe it’s nostalgia, or maybe it’s the lack of interesting “modern” franchise characters; but I find myself looking forward to Rambo or John Rambo or whatever they decide to call the upcoming film in the series.

It seems like only yesterday that Stallone was down on his luck and unable to get a film financed. But following the success of Rocky Balboa he seems to be the hottest director/former action star this side of Clint Eastwood.

I’ll be honest with you, I was never really a fan of Sly when he was in his prime. I liked the occasional film such a Cliffhanger and my personal guilty pleasure Tango and Cash, although that does costar Kurt “god” Russell. However following his stint on that other movie related website last year (okay, I’ll mention them: AICN) I decided that he seemed like a nice, humble guy who deserved a break in this CGI infested world. I then went out and bought the Rambo box sets and finally discovered the genius of Stallone.

Which brings me nicely to the new Rambo film.

There was a YouTube version of the official trailer for the new Rambo movie making the rounds yesterday. Well here’s a higher res and better quality version of it.

It’s toned WAY down from the previous footage that I had on the site a while back and is more of a standard trailer, suitable for all audiences. Looks like classic Rambo to me and I’m looking forward to this one.

[UPDATED] Just the other day I commented on how movie studios seem to be in a current trend of liking longer movie titles. At least when it comes to movie titles, longer is not always better (oh, grow up).

Anyway, the word today was that the studio had just renamed Sylvester Stallone’s fourth Rambo movie from the simple and effective:

John Rambo

to the longer and cliche’d:

Rambo to Hell and Back

If this new title had been the first one out I might not have minded it, but compared to the first one it seems kind of hokey.

Here’s a simple but pretty cool poster for the new John Rambo Rambo movie, which opens January 25, 2008 (Click for a larger version). The release date is a head scratcher because January (and it appears September, too) is the dumping ground for movies that studios don’t want to promote and instead just let die at the box office. I guess they just want to settle for the tax write-off.

This is confusing, because the the very bloody and awesome preview suggests Stallone, who wrote and directed, has a big hit on his and the studio’s hands. Rambo’s return is welcome, especially now, to come in and save the day (with a little bit of angst).

This week’s podcast has a little bit of news on The Dark Knight, Iron Man, the upcoming Terminator movies and Stallone’s John Rambo. Also some TV coverage regarding the ill-advised Jericho cancellation and the overly jam-packed Smallville Season 6 finale.

I apologize for a couple of skips and the abrupt ending, it seems my connection was a bit “iffy” today. :-\

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Originally over at AICN, which received it straight from Stallone himself.

Now THIS is an old-school action movie, baby. Be warned, it’s very gory… if you ask me this actually comes across like a grindhouse reel.