Sylvester Stallone knows a thing or two about resurrecting his long-dormant and most popular franchises after bringing both Rocky Balboa and John Rambo back to the big screen in recent years, and now he’s in the early stages of creating a follow-up to what many of the actor’s fans regard as one of his unsung greats.
It was recently confirmed that a sequel to 1993’s Demolition Man was in the works, and unsurprisingly, those with a strong affinity for the original are very much on board with the news. While no other details are available yet about John Spartan’s return, we’ve already heard that Wesley Snipes is also wanted to reprise his role as Spartan’s arch-nemesis Simon Phoenix, and now some new plot details have come our way which shed some light on how that may work.
According to our sources – the same ones who told us a new Scream movie is in the works and that Karen Gillan is being eyed for Pirates of the Caribbean 6 –Â Demolition Man 2 is set to jump even further into the future and take place in the year 2058. As we previously reported, Phoenix will return as a clone with a mission to return the world back to the way it used to be in the first movie’s 2032 setting, where only a small minority had any free will.
However, he won’t be the movie’s main villain, and it’ll be revealed that the clone is only being used as a puppet by the real big bad to carry out his bidding. The driving force of the story is said to be an artificial intelligence program with the power to modify people’s ability to control their own free will, meaning that Stallone’s Spartan doesn’t only have a clone of his old enemy from 1996 and 2032 to deal with, but also a mysterious figure lurking in the background that’s been pulling the strings all along.
Of course, the project is still in the earliest stages of development and certain plot elements can still be tweaked before production begins, but that’s a solid enough hook for Demolition Man 2 and it’ll be interesting to see John Spartan and his signature beret having to deal with another 30 years’ worth of technological advancements given that in the timeline of the movie, he’ll be about 100 years old at this point. Let’s just hope he’s spent that time figuring out how to master the three seashells.
