As you’ll no doubt have heard by now, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger joined former fellow “Planet Hollywood” shareholder Sylvester Stallone to shoot a couple of scenes for the latter’s new testosterone-packed flick “The Expendables” on the weekend.
The film’s publicist has since revealed that Willis is playing the character of ‘Church’ and Schwarzenegger is playing ‘Trench’.
Back in December, you may recall I published the character breakdowns for the film. I won’t run them all again here, but I will re-publish the breakdown for ‘Church’, the character Willis is playing.
Church – The man that hires the ‘Expendables’ (run by ‘Barney’ and ‘Christmas’, assumingly the characters played by Stallone and Statham, respectively) to go after General Garza (who essentially runs his own island – described as a human rights graveyard). He’s an older bloke, and has a connection to the young man who Garza has apparently assassinated. This is personal, in other words. He wants Garza killed and his island burnt down. Five million dollars does the trick.
And though I don’t have the breakdown for his character, Schwarzenegger’s character, Trench, is the retired Lieutenant General of the Expendables.
So how did the big shoot go? According to publicist Sheryl Main - it was “atomic”!
‘’…After Arnold, Bruce and Sly went through the scene a couple of times they all 3 headed off to wardrobe and make-up. at 8:10am with three cameras rolling the biggest action icons of our time went to work. I thought it was electric in Brazil when all of The Expendables stepped on set – but today was atomic!!!! the whole crew was mesmerized as we watched the three of them play off of each other in a pivotal scene that sets up the whole movie. And while I can’t/don’t want to give too much away I can tell you that Arnold’s character is Trench and Bruce is Church, the scene was shot in an empty church without extras and minimal set dec and it has tension and humor – what more can a girl ask for! Sly was in top form as a director today and was in total command. Bruce and Arnold were consummate professionals at all times – we got through the scene quickly without compromise. In 6 hours we did wide shots, close-ups, turned around…the whole nine yards…pretty impressive. Very Clint Eastwood.’’
If "The Expendables" hits big - and I think it's pretty safe to say it will - you can expect further adventures of the titular mercs.
Millennium Films' Avi Lerner said recently that he believes the company has their next big franchise in 63-year-old Sly's flick.
"Definitely. We already have got some ideas about 'Expendables No. 2,' 'No. 3,' Definitely, it's a franchise movie."
So having said that, there's always the possibility that Schwarzenegger and Willis might pop up again as Trench and Church, respectively, in sequels.






