After more than a decade in development hell, the Expendables universe is finally getting its female spin-off — and this time it might actually make it to the screen. Expendabelles, as it’s tentatively titled, was officially announced by Eclectic Pictures and Hollywood Ventures Group at the Cannes Film Festival. The project has technically existed on paper since 2012, but this is the first time in years it has felt like something more than a press release.
Y2K Panic and Geopolitical Tension – That’s the Setting
And here’s where it gets interesting. The new pitch frames the movie as an origin story, dropping us into the late 1990s — specifically, as the press release puts it, “at the height of Y2K-era tension and geopolitical uncertainty.” That’s a long way from where this project started.
Remember the 2014 take, where the female operatives were going to pose as call girls to rescue a kidnapped nuclear scientist? That premise wouldn’t survive a single Twitter cycle today — and you can bet it played a part in why the project sat on the shelf for so long.
The Y2K angle is a much smarter sell. Think about it — the late ’90s gave us the last truly analog era of action filmmaking, before CGI swallowed everything. And the post-Cold War mess (the Balkans, the post-Soviet chaos, the first wave of cyber paranoia) is loaded with story material nobody’s really touched in years. There’s room here to make something that isn’t just a gender-swapped retread. Stylish. Retro-modern. Grounded in a moment people are nostalgic about but barely remember properly.
Who’s Steering the Ship?
Cole Markel from Eclectic is producing alongside Glenn Gainor, who co-founded HVG. The exec producer bench is deep — Sandy Climan, Joe Smith out of Thirteenth Studios, Nelly Kim, Julie Kroll, Stephen R. Foreht, John Yarincik. The film is currently in the packaging phase — Hollywood-speak for “actively assembling director, writers, and cast, but nothing’s signed yet.”
In his announcement statement, Markel didn’t undersell it. He argued there’s “always been a strong global appetite for female-driven action franchises,” and that now is the time to “introduce a bold new generation of elite operatives into this universe.” The pitch: fresh, stylish, adrenaline-fueled — but also slotted firmly into the Expendables mythology while standing on its own.
Why Now? And Why It Might Actually Work
The Expendables franchise isn’t exactly in fighting shape. The 2023 entry Expend4bles landed at 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, Sylvester Stallone effectively handed the baton to Jason Statham, and there’s been no official word on a fifth installment since. The whole series has grossed around $800 million across four films — respectable, but the momentum has clearly stalled.
A female-led spin-off is exactly the kind of reset the franchise needs to re-enter the conversation — especially because the market for women-led action looks completely different today than it did in 2012. After Furiosa, Atomic Blonde, The Old Guard, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, there’s no longer any need to “justify” an all-female elite squad. You just put them on screen and let them work.
Past Attempts – And What They Tell Us
The development history of Expendabelles is a textbook case of how a Hollywood project can spend a decade circling the runway. The first script came from Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith — the Legally Blonde duo — way back in 2012. Two years later, Robert Luketic signed on to direct, and the casting wishlist was wild: Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Cameron Diaz, Milla Jovovich. Then it all went quiet. The project finally got the kill shot in 2022, when Millennium Films exec Jeffrey Greenstein told THR he’d rather just add women to the main Expendables lineup than spin out a separate movie for them.
Now a completely new team is in charge. Millennium is out of the picture, Eclectic Pictures and Hollywood Ventures Group are in, and the concept has shifted: this isn’t a parallel-universe female version anymore — it’s a prequel set before the events of the original Expendables.
When Could We See It?
There’s no release date yet. There’s no director and no cast attached either. Packaging in Hollywood typically takes anywhere from six to eighteen months when things go well, so realistically, cameras won’t roll before 2027. By then, the Y2K nostalgia wave (see: Marvel and HBO’s recent ’90s-set projects) should be near its peak — meaning the timing might actually be perfect.
So Expendabelles is officially alive again. Whether it makes it from press release to projector is the only question left.
Source: hollywoodreporter.com, movieweb.com