New Rambo Star Revealed: Not Stallone’s Choice

The surprising new Rambo has been revealed and the acclaimed actor is not Sylvester Stallone’s first choice. 

Noah Centineo, 29, will portray the iconic musclebound soldier in origins film, John Rambo, following successful turns in Black Adam, Netflix show To All the Boys I Loved Before and The Recruit.

Per Deadline, the film will follow a young John Rambo during the Vietnam war.

Sisu director Jalmari Helander is set to direct from a screenplay by writing duo Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani.

Sources told the publication production is hoped to begin in early 2026 in Thailand, with Lionsgate said to be the frontrunner to land the film. 

When it was released in 1982, the first Rambo movie, First Blood, was a huge commercial success despite ambivalent critical reviews.

That success led to four sequels with the Vietnam War veteran, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988), Rambo (2008) and Rambo: Last Blood (2019).

Despite the franchise’s incredible legacy, insiders said Stallone is aware but not involved with the project – but he has ‘been alerted’ to Centineo’s casting.

The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Stallone and Centineo for comment and has yet to hear back. 

Last year Stallone revealed he wanted Barbie star Ryan Gosling to play Rambo during a candid chat on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show.

He said of Gosling: ‘I met him at a dinner and obviously we’re opposites. He’s good-looking — I’m not. That’s how it works.

‘But he goes, “I was fascinated by Rambo, and I used to go to school dressed as Rambo and people would chase me away and I still didn’t stop”.

‘He just kept saying that he had a lot of affiliation with Rambo, and I thought, this is interesting. If I ever pass the baton, I’ll pass it on to him because he loves the character.’

Noah shot to fame portraying Peter Kavinsky in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before film series starting in 2018, establishing himself as a teen heartthrob.

He has also starred in the The Recruit, playing a CIA lawyer entangled in a dangerous world.

Noah’s most recent roles include Black Adam and Warfare.

The actor has also appeared in Charlie Angles, The Fosters and Sierra Burgess Is A Loser.

The film news comes six years after Rambo: Last Blood was slammed by critics, fans and even the creator. 

Bestselling author David Morrell, who wrote First Blood in 1972, took to social media to reveal his true thoughts about the then- just-released movie, Rambo: Last Blood.  

‘I agree with these RAMBO: LAST BLOOD reviews. The film is a mess. Embarrassed to have my name associated with it,’ Morrell tweeted on the flick’s premiere day.

In Rambo: Last Blood, Stallone’s titular character travels to Mexico to rescue his friend’s granddaughter from the hands of cartel sex traffickers with blood results. 

Morrell told Newsweek that he had spoke with Stallone, who co-wrote the movie, over the phone early on in the script writing process. 

The author said that he hoped the film would showcase a ‘soulful’ Rambo, whose actions in the movie included finding a missing child and defending a family that he himself lacked.  

Not long after their conversation, Morrell and Stallone apparently stopped talking with each other and Stallone went on to finish writing the script with Absentia TV series creator and writer Matt Cirulnick. 

‘I felt degraded and dehumanized after I left the theater,’ Morrell told Newsweek, adding that ‘Instead of being soulful, this new movie lacks one.

‘I felt I was less a human being for having seen it, and today that’s an unfortunate message,’ he said.