Sylvester Stallone recently disclosed that he planned and pitched a Rambo prequel in which he would have been de-aged with AI. However, he ultimately scrapped the project, and now, a separate prequel movie, titled John Rambo, with The Recruit’s Noah Centineo playing the eponymous character, is in development.

Sylvester Stallone’s unmade AI prequel would have featured a ‘bon vivant’ John Rambo

Stallone spoke about his unmade Rambo AI prequel in multiple recent interviews. He told ScreenRant that he wanted to recreate Rambo’s origin story using AI and focusing on his life before Vietnam. “I wanted to do the first AI… not retroactive… but I wanted to rewrite history of the earlier Rambo because I wanted Rambo to be the nicest guy in the school, the valedictorian, the prom king, and all that stuff,” Stallone recalled.

The iconic actor then discussed how this project would have dealt with what happened to Rambo after he arrived in Vietnam and how it impacted his “bon vivant” demeanor. “He thinks it’s going to be a three-week hit-and-run, and you see him being tortured and captured, his friends murdered, one thing after another, and [his] life in Saigon,” Stallone elaborated before noting that he thought that they could accomplish this by de-aging him with AI.

According to the 79-year-old action star, he and his collaborators “procrastinated too long,” and the team behind John Rambo took over. “I hope, you know, good luck,” he added.

In a separate interview during an appearance on The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast, Stallone revealed that he even pitched the project as an AI experiment, not receiving an entirely favorable response. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” he explained. “AI is sophisticated enough to go through Saigon to see him at 18 years old and basically use the same image. So it isn’t as big a stretch,” Stallone further stated.

Notably, Jalmari Helander is directing Noah Centineo-led John Rambo from a script by Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani. The movie currently doesn’t have a release date.