Noah Centineo fans are eating well this week, folks. Scarcely 24 hours after we learned the Warfare star’s live-action Gundam movie is going ahead at Netflix, another buzzy project led by the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before breakout has just entered production. Today, Lionsgate took to Instagram to reveal that John Rambo, Sisu director Jalmari Helander’s eyebrow-raising First Blood prequel, has officially entered production — and they’ve even dropped a first poster for the movie. Check it out below;
Set years before the events of First Blood, presumably during John J. Rambo’s (Centineo) formative time serving in Vietnam, John Rambo — which is shooting across Bangkok, Krabi, Phang Nga, and Kanchanaburi in Thailand — is a real passion project for Finnish action filmmaker Helander. In a director’s statement accompanying the new poster, Helander writes: “When I was 11, I saw ‘First Blood’ for the first time, and it changed my life. Rambo wasn’t just a film to me — it stayed with me growing up and was a defining influence on why I wanted to become a filmmaker. As we begin production on the origin of John Rambo, we’re going back to the beginning. This is Rambo stripped down, raw, and real — a survival story about endurance, persistence, and lost innocence. It’s an honor to shape this next chapter with deep respect for the character and the legacy, and to bring audiences the start of John Rambo’s journey.”
Joining Helander and Centineo out in Thailand to bring Rambo’s origin story to life is a formidable cast including Sinners’ Yao, Jason Tobin (A Thousand Blows), Quincy Isaiah (Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty), Jefferson White (Civil War), and Tayme Thapthimthong (The White Lotus). And if Helander’s most recent offering, Sisu: Road To Revenge, is anything to go by, then we wish these guys luck — if Sly Stallone’s Rambo bow Last Blood was a bit of an anaemic actioner, then we’ve got a feeling John Rambo is about to give us all the blood… and guts… and viscera. Yippee!