Now that The Expendables franchise is done, Sylvester Stallone is returning to his old, reliable characters.  First up is the Rocky spin-off Creed, which will focus on the grandson (Michael B. Jordan) of Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) being mentored by Rocky Balboa.  The movie will mark a big leap for director Ryan Coogler, who previously directed Jordan in the heartbreaking Fruitvale Station, and I'm curious to see how much of the story will belong to Creed and how much goes to Rocky.  Stallone is fairly generous with his co-stars, but he never let anyone forget that while Expendables was a big ensemble, he was the lead.

Stallone recently tweeted that he was headed to Philadelphia to start shooting on Creed, but he also provided a surprising revelation about keeping the Rambo franchise alive with "Last Blood: Rambo".  Hit the jump for more.

A couple days ago, Stallone tweeted out the following to his fans [via JoBlo]:

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/TheSlyStallone/status/549319200334807041[/EMBED_TWITTER]   [EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/TheSlyStallone/status/549319789953290240[/EMBED_TWITTER]   [EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/TheSlyStallone/status/549320892862328832[/EMBED_TWITTER]

Even though it abruptly ends, Rambo is a ton of fun and unapologetic in its extreme violence (The Expendables movie feel ridiculously tame by comparison).

It's important to note that Stallone didn’t say when he was planning to do Rambo.  In an ideal world, he would do it immediately following Creed, but it may take time to get the screenplay right. Then again, I don't see how the screenplay could be more than five pages and one of the pages only has the words "Kill People".

But whenever Last Blood: Rambo comes along, it looks like it will take priority over Brad Furman's Scarpa.  As we previously reported, the film is "Scripted by Goodfellas and Casino scribe Nicholas Pileggi, the film tells the story of Gregory Scarpa, a former capo and hit man for the Colombo crime family known as the Grim Reaper.  Scarpa boasted of killing 50 people and eventually turned FBI informant during his tenure in the mob.  Subsequently, Scarpa contracted HIV and died from AIDS-related complications in 1994."  Even though Stallone loves his action movies, I think he's an underrated dramatic actor, and it would be cool to see him tackle this role.

Looking at what Stallone has planned, this series of movies could be a nice resurgence for the actor, who has been coasting on The Expendables movies with the occasional break for garbage like Grudge Match and Bullet to the Head.