Billy Dee Williams and Sylvester Stallone Have a 'Nighthawks' Reunion

This one is for the '80s movies fans out there: A recent run-in at the gym brought Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams back together; though both actors are obviously icons in their own right, they also happened to star together in the 1981 action flick, Nighthawks!

So great to see @TheSlyStallone at the gym today. Brought back some great memories working together on Nighthawks~

Hey Sly, Nighthawks 2? Still think we could do our own stunts??!! 😎 pic.twitter.com/ZIeOmr2vlP

— Billy Dee Williams (@realbdw) February 28, 2019

Nighthawks starred Stallone and Williams as two cops on the hunt for a terrorist (played by Rutger Hauer) who has come to carry out on attack on New York City. The film has a lot of funny little bits of trivia surrounding it, such as the fact that it was Hauer's American film debut, or the fact that he was injured doing a stunt Stallone had designed, leading to volatile relationship between the two actors on set. Nighthawks also lost its original director (Freaky Friday's Gary Nelson) a week into production, and tried to replace him with Bruce Malmuth, who only had one film credit under his belt.

Regardless, the film was critically approved, and a commercial success ($20 million on a $5 million budget), helping launch Hauer's Hollywood career, and furthering the careers of both Stallone (who had jumped to superstardom thanks to Rocky I and II) and Williams (who had just broken out in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back). Craziest of all: Nighthawks was supposed to be The French Connection III, but Gene Hackman turned it down, and it went from Fox to Universal, where it was retooled as Nighthawks.

If you haven't checked out the film, you should. Nighthawks was ahead of its time in predicting terrorist strikes on urban America - and on New York City in particular. In fact, when it was trying to get a greenlight, the studio felt that Nighthawks was too far-fetched in its premise to get made. Now, it looks downright prophetic.

Both Stallone and Williams have good reason to hit the gym again: The former is dusting off his John Rambo character one last time for Rambo V; the latter is reprising his role as Lando Calrissian in Star Wars: Episode IX.

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