Stallone must have plowed through all those seasons of Breaking Bad on Netflix just as excitedly as you or I, as he’s adapted a novel with some familiar elements into a script that has already attached some names.

Called Homefront, the story revolves around Jason Statham playing a retired DEA agent who moves into a town, oblivious to the fact that it is a meth-haven run by a kingpin named “Gator,” who will be played by James Franco. Sly will produce but has brought in a new TV director, Gary Fleder, to actually direct the adaptation of Chuck Logan’s book.

It’s interesting to see Sylvester Stallone, pioneer of the 80s badass who was ready to rip apart limbs from frame 1, get into the “dormant badass” business that folks like Jason Statham and Liam Neeson have so successfully played in lately. As we get older and fatter as an audience, I suspect there is a great taste for stories about seemingly normal, impotent men that reveal their true badassery under pressure, rather than the cover-to-cover godliness of the 80s action hero. Nostalgia for the beefcake action is all well and good for The Expendables, but with a generation of dudes past the point of fantasizing about ever getting in Rambo shape, now it’s on to the “I could be super ruthless and cunning if they fucked with my family” scenarios. It’s good business- he’s a sly one, that Sly.

Homefront will start filming late next month.

Source | THR (via Dark Horizons)