As long promised by Sylvester Stallone’s now-dormant Twitter feed (amid the aphorisms and conspiracy theories, anyway), there will definitely be a sequel to The Expendables. But despite Stallone essentially scripting and casting the film in real time over the past few months, the L.A. Times has revealed that Stallone will neither write nor direct the sequel: Script duties have instead been shuffled over to David Agosto and Ken Kaufman—who previously tackled the old-dudes-still-got-it theme in Space Cowboys and handled primates in Curious George—while Stallone is reportedly meeting with potential directors.
Stallone purists probably shouldn’t worry, however, as even with his reduced role behind the scenes, he’s still likely to play a large part in shaping the sequel; in fact, he already told the press shortly after the first film opened that he planned to use it to introduce some all-new characters and fade the old ones into the background, hopefully drawing even deeper from the well of former action-movie stars. So provided Agosto and Kaufman are on the same page, maybe there’s hope yet for Don “The Dragon” Wilson.