The Rambo returns - Rambo IV details

Sylvester Stallone has revealed how he nearly died after he asked his co-star to fight for real during filming on Rocky IV.

The 59-year-old told Dolph Lundgren to forget the choreographed fight scene and to come out punching, thinking that he could dodge all that was thrown at him.

The muscle-bound star of Judge Dredd and Rambo remembered telling Dolph: “I want you to come out for the first 30 seconds, trying to take me out.”

However, Stallone, then aged 40, did not realize how fast or powerful his Scandinavian co-star, who played Ivan Drago in the film, was.

“The next thing I knew I was in intensive care with a tube in my nose and nuns walking round the bed, going ‘Can we get you something?’ It was worth it,” he reminisced.

Rambo story will be based on a new novel, rather than the much talked about script that features Rambo taking on terrorists in the UN. The new movie will also deal with a domestic problem that Rambo faces in the style of “Straw Dogs” and “Deliverance”, and in the most shocking news of all he will lose his iconic head band! Here’s exactly what was said by Stallone himself:

“They (the studio) optioned a book for Rambo IV. It’ll deal with a domestic problem. No head band.”

According to Stallone, the new plotline sees the character of Rambo as having “assimilated into the tapestry of America”, living with his family - including daughter - in relative peace for the past fifteen years but still working for the military, when work pressures force him to move his family to the American outback. The Navajo-Indian former Green Beret and his family are then subject to an attack by white-supremacists, and Rambo has to risk life-and-limb in rescuing his 10-year old daughter from being held hostage.

Nu Image/ Millennium Films acquired the rights to the ‘Rambo’ film franchise, with their chairman, Avi Lerner, stating that Stallone is “one of the smartest guys I know.” Having persuaded Stallone to co-star with a younger actor in ‘Rambo IV’, Lerner is confident about the film’s future success. “It’s a franchise,” he says. “If No. 4 works, then you have a No. 5.”

When asked thatisn’t he a little too old to play an action hero all over again Stallone quipped: “I’m still in my prime and I look forward to showing fans the real action hero again.”

“Today’s idea of an action hero is Orlando Bloom. Orlando Bloom? Give me a break,” he said.