The first Sylvester Stallone Escape Plan flopped in America, but it still became a series by following the formula of The Fast and the Furious movies.
A Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger prison escape movie repeated the same franchise trajectory as the Fast & Furious saga. While moviegoers may have dreamed of an Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone movie during the ’80s or ’90s, that didn’t come to pass. The two actors were bitter rivals during this period, always trying to one-up each other in terms of bodycount, muscles or box office gross. It was only in later years that Arnie and Sly became good friends, and finally worked together in The Expendables movies.
Schwarzenegger’s role in the first three Expendables amounted to little more than cameos, however. The first real pairing for Arnie and Stallone was Escape Plan, a 2013 action thriller. This cast Stallone as an escape specialist who is thrown into an “inescapable” prison by forces unknown, so he becomes a reluctant partner with Schwarzenegger’s mystery prisoner. The film was fun but forgettable, but the last thing anybody expected was for an Escape Plan franchise to happen.
The Original Escape Plan Was A Box Office Flop In America (But Did Huge Business Overseas)
Escape Plan became Stallone’s next action franchise
A film pairing Stallone and Schwarzenegger would have been huge in their heyday, but by 2013, American audiences had moved on. Escape Plan made just over $25 million in America (via Box Office Mojo), less than half its production budget. Escape Plan did huge business overseas, with its worldwide gross being $137 million in total. In China alone, the film grossed a very healthy $40 million, and while it may not have been a success in the U.S., it was clear the film had sequel potential internationally.
Escape Plan 2 Repeated Fast & Furious’ Box Office Response & Was Largely Made For International Audiences
Escape Plan didn’t meet the same success as Fast & Furious though
There was some surprise when Escape Plan 2: Hades was announced, considering the original’s domestic underperformance. Stallone signed on but Arnold Schwarzenegger quickly passed, to be replaced by Dave Bautista’s character DeRosa. However, Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming is the true star of Escape Plan 2, with the sequel being designed with international markets in mind. Hades went STV in America, but had a theatrical release in countries like Russia and China; the sequel would gross the majority of its box office from its Chinese release too.
Escape Plan 2 followed the approach The Fast and the Furious movies did with Tokyo Drift in 2006. When the saga’s stars Vin Diesel and Paul Walker went on to other projects, it was decided to lean into the franchise’s international popularity instead. This certainly worked in Tokyo Drift’s favor, giving the sequel a fresh environment and subculture to explore, while opening the door for future sequels to include an even more diverse cast of characters.
Outside of Fast & Furious, there are plenty of examples of action franchises appealing more to foreign territories than America. The Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies, for instance, always did lukewarm business in the U.S. but were huge overseas. Escape Plan 2 may have modeled itself after Fast & Furious’ international approach, but it was still a bomb overall. The sequel failed to recoup its $20 million budget, even after grossing over $13 million from its China release.