It was a bit of a risk to release a film about putting action stars from decades past into one big fighting team, but so far, the Expendables has had three hit movies, and now another one is on the way with Expendables 4.  Sylvester Stallone himself has confirmed that he and his team will be assembling again for a planned release in 2017.  This is what else is known about the Expendables 4 Release Date and News including the Cast. 

There Will Be Blood (and, as a result, an R-rating)

One of the reasons that The Expendables 3 made less than its predecessors is that the filmed leaked early on the Internet, and it had a PG-13 rating.  The first two were rated R with a lot of blood splatter, but the PG-13 toned in down so much that fans of the first two were a little less than impressed with it. 

According to Gamespot, Stallone has said "I believe it was a horrible miscalculation on everyone's part in trying to reach a wider audience, and in doing such, diminish the violence that the audience expects.  I'm quite certain it won't happen again."

There Will Be Bigger Action

The action movie formula is to give audiences as much bang for their buck as possible.  Then, after a sequel is green-lit, a bigger budget gives audiences more guns and explosions.  According to Empire online, the Expendables 4 is set with the biggest budget yet, at 100 million.  Most of the will probably go to the returning stars. 

By the way, the reason why Expendables 4 was green-lit in spite of the last film making less money was Expendables 3 did make a lot of money in China ($80 million compared to the $40 grossed in the US). 

Who Will Be Returning?

So far, there isn't any word on who will be returning, but the Expendables series has always been essentially Stallone's franchise like the Mission Impossible series belongs to Tom Cruise.  It would be difficult imagining The Expendables without at least Stallone, but there was a lot of emphasis in Expendables 3 creating a newer and younger team.  It seemed like Expendables 3 was going to be a set-up for transition into this new team for what could be Expendables 4, or perhaps some kind of closure in case a fourth film was not going to be made. 

Before the Expendables 4 had been confirmed, there had been talks of an Expendables TV series, and even an all female-led spin-off otherwise known as The ExpendaBelles, according to Den of Geek.  There isn't any more news on that front. 

The smart move for The Expendables is to plan some kind of big storyline for it in the next few movies, as most movie franchises are going in that direction.   The series is really all about the team going on missions, but these missions never carry over into the next movie.  The characters could use a little development as they are unashamedly these super-soldiers who are in it for the action and money.  One aspect that should be addressed is something Stallone was feeling in the first film, that the life of an Expendable is action-filled, but very much empty unless you are truly helping someone else out.  In other words, The Expendables films might want to develop the pure heart of their story before embracing its pure action.