Eclectic Pictures and Hollywood Ventures Group are collaborating to launch a “female-driven expansion” of The Expendables franchise. It is part of a new slate of “globally commercial films.” The project is The Expendabelles, and yes, it has been here before.
Millennium Films
The first The Expendables film opened globally in 2010 and was the first in the franchise to gross north of $100 million. Filmmakers have continuously tried to crack a female-led version. The project was even officially confirmed to have been shelved in November 2022 by Millennium Films president Jeffrey Greenstein. Now it’s back in the fold, under new power.
The Expendabelles
Eclectic Pictures and HVG are still in the packaging stage and are currently “actively assembling” creative talent to move the spin-off film forward. Producers are in discussions with distribution partners, financiers, and creative talent. According to the announcement, The Expendabelles will be an origin story set in the late 1990s, during the height of Y2K-era tension and geopolitical uncertainty.
Eclectic’s Heidi Jo Markel and HVG co-founder Glenn Gainor will produce the film. The executive producer team includes HVG co-founder Sandy Climan, Thirteenth Studios’ Joe Smith, Nelly Kim, Kroll, Stephen R. Foreht, and John Yarincik.
Markel responded directly to the news. “We are thrilled to finally bring Expendabelles to life alongside our incredible partners at Hollywood Ventures Group,” he said, adding that “there has always been a strong global appetite for female-driven action franchises.”
“We see this as an opportunity to honor the DNA of what made The Expendables resonate globally, while evolving it in a way that feels both timely and commercially compelling. This is a world audiences know, but we’re introducing them to it in a way they’ve never seen before,” Gainor added.
The road to this point has been long. Back in 2014, Legally Blonde director Robert Luketic was set to helm a version written by that film’s scribes, Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah, for Millennium Films. That version collapsed, and the project spent years in development limbo before being officially abandoned.
Female-Led Action Movies
The all-female action franchise has been a hard nut to crack for Hollywood. A few years ago at Cannes, Jessica Chastain and Simon Kinberg hard-launched The 355. The project featured Chastain in a girl-power action romp alongside Penelope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger, and Lupita Nyong’o. The Universal Pictures release eventually made its way to theaters in 2022, but fell flat at the box office, pulling in just $27 million globally.
The 2019 reboot of the Charlie’s Angels franchise also disappointed, earning just $17 million domestically and $73 million worldwide. Those numbers will likely weigh on any distributor in conversations with Eclectic and HVG right now.
Still, the team is pressing forward. No cast or director has been announced yet. What exists today is a concept, a creative team, and fresh momentum at one of the industry’s biggest deal-making venues. Whether The Expendabelles finally makes it out of development and onto screens remains to be seen.
