Kurt Russell Once Pitched A Huge Action Crossover With Schwarzenegger, Stallone & More
By Ethan Anderton/April 21, 2017 1:30 pm EST
Presumably, Arnold Schwarzenegger would play the T-800 from The Terminator, perhaps as the film’s villain, while Sylvester Stallone would play John Rambo, and Bruce Willis would play John McClane from Die Hard. For Kurt Russell’s part, he would have played Snake Plissken from Escape from New York. Though he did realize that he would probably just have to produce the movie because “the only thing Snake’s gonna do is walk in and go [seemingly mumbles ‘fuck it’] and leaves.”
“Years ago I did think, and nobody would listen to me, I thought it would be great to take a bunch of the characters that guys like Bruce Willis, [Sylvester] Stallone and [Arnold] Schwarzenegger – they all had one best character in the action-ary world – that I thought it would be fun to put those guys together. That would have been a realistic version of what Marvel did. But [pitching] it was like talking to a wall. It was ahead of its time, I guess.”
Russell mentions that this pitch happened about 30 years ago, which would have been right in the heart of the 1980s when all of those actors were at the height of their popularity in the action world. The only problem is the kind of story that would have been required to bring all those two together would require plenty of time travel and a lot of questions from characters like John McClane and John Rambo, who are much more grounded than the likes of The Terminator and Snake Plissken.
Perhaps the best way to make it happen would have been in a world like the one where Last Action Hero takes place. Even though the movie didn’t turn out as it was originally envisioned, it exists in a world where a bunch of movie characters come together. There’s a cameo from Robert Patrick as T-1000, a black and white digitalization of Humphrey Bogart and more. It would require some suspension of disbelief for sure, but it would have been insanely fun. Maybe, after hearing about this idea, a comic book company can get together with him and turn it into a limited series.
The question is, who else would be included in the line-up? Movies.com proposes Mel Gibson as Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon, Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan from Dirty Harry, Chuck Norris as Colonel James Braddock from Missing in Action, Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey from Death Wish, Jean-Claude Van Damme as Frank Dux from Bloodsport and Carl Weathers as Action Jackson from the movie of the same name.
Personally, I’d like to see Peter Weller as RoboCop, Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley and Eddie Murphy from Beverly Hills Cop thrown in there for some comedic relief. Maybe even get Tom Cruise as Maverick in there for a bit of air support.
If you’d like to watch more of the Kurt Russell interview, it starts at 4:09 in the video below:
