Quentin Tarantino Reveals What Actor He’d Remake First Blood With

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has proven over his career just how ambitious his storytelling sensibilities are, delivering audiences a number of original narratives, but were he to revive an older story and deliver audiences a reboot from his perspective, he could see himself delivering a new take on First Blood with Adam Driver playing the John Rambo role. Driver wouldn’t be the only big star in the effort, as Tarantino would like Kurt Russell to play the role of Sherriff Will Teasle, who was previously played by Brian Dennehy in the 1982 film, which has earned four sequels to date. Star Sylvester Stallone has teased that another installment was on the way.

“If I just wanted to make a good movie, that I knew would be good, I would take David Morrell’s novel for First Blood and do the novel,” Tarantino shared with The Big Picture podcast, per MovieWeb. “Not the movie that was made out of First Blood. I would do the novel. And Kurt Russell would play the sheriff, and [Adam Driver] would play Rambo. Every time I read it, the dialogue is so fantastic in the David Morrell novel that you’re reading it out loud. It would be so good. But now I want to do more than that. But if it was just about to make a good movie, that’s out there.”

The John Rambo franchise would go on to be known for its violence and action-packed storylines, though Tarantino’s comments about adapting the original Morrell novel means he’d explore a slightly different tone. The two stories do have core similarities, in that they focus on Vietnam veteran John Rambo suffering from PTSD following his return from the war and an altercation with the local police triggers him to take extreme actions to evade capture. The film, however, leans into the intense manhunt and ensuing mayhem as opposed to embracing the elements of the psychological damage Rambo suffered in a POW camp.

One of the biggest deviations from the original story was that Rambo killed himself at the end of the book, as to put an end to his suffering. The First Blood movie did, in fact, originally include an ending in which Rambo pleads with his former commanding officer to kill him, though the theatrical release of the film ended with Rambo’s survival.

Tarantino has previously claimed he only intends to direct one more movie, though it’s unknown what that movie will be.

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