Originally positioned as a star vehicle for Bruce Willis before Arnold Schwarzenegger took a look at it this spring as one of his possible comeback movies, Summit has now landed another aging action star to take on the lead role in “The Tomb.”
Sylvester Stallone will now take on the picture, and though Antoine Fuqua was previously attached to direct, he’s currently busy with “Hunter Killer” (and a handful of other projects including the Eminem boxing movie “Southpaw“) so a new helmer will have to found, but the script is staying intact. Penned by Miles Chapman (”Road House 2”) with a rewrite by Jason Keller (”Machine Gun Preacher”), the story follows Ray Breslin, a security expert who designed an inescapable, high-tech prison only to be framed for a crime and locked up in it. So yeah, this shouldn’t tax your brain too much. But this is yet another project for the 65-year-old Stallone who is benefiting from a sudden audience interest in seeing old people kill and blow up stuff.
He’s already got “The Expendables 2” and “Bullet to the Head” on the way for 2012, and this seems right in the B-movie sweet spot, even if the premise is somewhat generic. No word yet on who is being looked at to sit in the director’s chair but expect someone in the Simon West vein of action movie helmers if not actually Simon West himself.
