Noah Centineo Cast as Rambo in Prequel to Sylvester Stallone Franchise: Report

Noah Centineo appears poised to take on one of Sylvester Stallone’s iconic roles.

On Monday, Aug. 11, Deadline and Variety reported that Centineo, 29, is set to star in a prequel to Stallone’s original 1982 action film First Blood titled John Rambo.

Deadline reported that the movie will be directed by Jalmari Helander (Sisu) and written by Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, and that the film plans to film in early 2026 in Thailand, citing sources. 

While no details have been made available yet regarding the movie’s story, Deadline reported that it will serve as a Vietnam War-set origin story for 79-year-old Stallone’s John Rambo character, who was introduced in First Blood as a traumatized veteran who gets into a violent confrontation with small-town police and sheriffs.

Reps for Centineo and Millennium Media, the production company behind the new Rambo prequel, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

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First Blood ultimately spawned four sequels that gave the series its iconic Rambo title. Stallone himself directed 2008’s Rambo, the fourth film in the series, and he returned one more time to star in 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood, which saw John Rambo travel to Mexico to save his niece after she is kidnapped by a cartel.

Stallone has expressed interest in seeing a Rambo prequel made as far back as 2019, when he told Screen Rant that he always thought about the character “when he was 16 or 17.”

“I hope they can do the prequel — he was the best person you could find,” Stallone said of his idea for a prequel. “He was the captain of the team; he was the most popular kid in school; super athlete. He was like Jim Thorpe, and the war is what changed him. If you saw him before, he was like the perfect guy.”

When Deadline first reported that the Rambo prequel was in development in May, the outlet noted that Stallone was aware the project was in development but not involved, noting that sources said he could appear in the movie “should a fitting role arise.”

In 2023, Stallone implied that he did not plan to make another movie in the Rambo series himself during an appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival. “He’s done pretty much, even though they want to do another one, but what am I fighting? Arthritis?” he joked at that time, per Screen Rant.

Centineo recently appeared on the big screen as an American soldier in the Iraq War drama Warfare. This year he also starred in Our Hero, Balthazar, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June.