Action hero legends Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are teaming up in prison-break thriller “Escape Plan”.
The two mega stars have been competing at the box office for decades with action movie franchises like “Rocky”, “Terminator” and “Rambo”. They had already tested the waters a few years ago, appearing together in a scene in “The Expendables” and its sequel.
The action duo hit the red carpet in New York for the movie’s US premiere. Schwarzenegger said he was delighted to be teaming up with his old rival:
“Working with Sly was a huge motivation because we wanted to do a movie for a long time. It was a great action piece and it also had really good scenes in it that gave me the ability to act and to do things that I have never done before in a dramatic way,” Schwarzenegger said.
“It’s not like, ‘Oh, look at us we’re bigger than the movie.’ We’re just two rats caught in a maze and how we need each even though we hate each other. Which is kind of like in life,” said Stallone with a smile.
Stallone plays a structural engineer who builds prisons and tests their security by being locked inside. For his latest assignment, he is framed and ends up having to hatch an escape plan with his cellmate, played by Schwarzenegger.
The two actors admitted the sense of competition between them was an asset for the movie:
“He wants to steal the scene, I want to steal the scene. We want to perform the best we can and everything comes out really as authentic as possible,” said Stallone.
“He’s absolutely right, because we really pushed each other. And I think it’s a perfect example that competition is healthy. It benefits the audience, it benefits the fans, because as he said he was trying to out perform me, I was trying to outperform him, and this has been going on for decades. I mean, you know, who has the best body, who has the most muscular body, who has the least body fat, who kills the most people, who has the biggest machine guns, who has the fastest helicopters – there was always competition and it makes you perform better,” added Schwarzenegger.
“Escape Plan” is on worldwide release now.