When it was first proposed, The Expendables sequel was supposed to promise big stars, bigger guns and tons of violence capped with lots of strong language. Well, not if Chuck Norris has anything to say about it.
In a recent interview with the Polish site Gazeta, Norris claimed that one of the conditions to his signing on to the project was that the movie aim for a PG-13 rating. It's a bit tricky to make out what Norris is saying in the video with the translator speaking over him, but here's what we were able to make out:
"With The Expendables 2, you have a lot of hard language in there that means that young people won't be able to see it. I said, 'I don't do movies like that. I didn't do them in the past and I didn't do them on my TV series.' I said, 'You have to cut out all the language, hardcore language, or I can't do it.' So they did and Expendables is now a PG-13 film so kids can see it."
How about that, Norris looking out for the kids. And Lionsgate. Let's not kid ourselves. A PG-13 movie opens the sequel to a larger audience that was previously shielded with the R rating. It’ll need that larger audience to balance the number of action fans who might pass on a PG-13 rated action flick.
The Expendables 2 opens August 17 and stars (deep breath) Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Liam Hemsworth, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Norris.
