Dolph Lundgren’s set to star in the action sci-fi horror mash-up, Battle Of The Damned. And once again, his character has an action hero name to die for...
Although hulking man of action Dolph Lundgren’s been busily making lots of films since his glory days in the 80s and 90s, it was great to see him appear in The Expendables, 2010’s explosive box of macho fireworks which starred too many other geek favourites to list here.
With The Expendables 2 now in post production, Lundgren’s all set to start shooting on his next film - a sci-fi horror action mash-up called Battle Of The Damned. News of this film actually seeped out a couple of weeks ago, and I’m ashamed to say it slipped right past me - a terrible oversight, it turns out, since the its premise sounds gloriously daft.
With Lundgren taking centre stage as a mercenary soldier, Battle Of The Damned is essentially a survivors versus zombies flick. With robots. Malfunctioning, prototype robots, so the marketing tells us.
Yes, it all sounds rather silly, I’m sure it’ll end up going straight to DVD, and there’s the small detail that Michael Bay happens to be producing a film called Zombies Vs Robots (due out next year), but Battle Of The Damned will have Dolph Lundgren in it. How bad can it be?
And if the mere presence of Dolph isn’t enough to entice you, consider this: the character he plays goes by the name of Max Gatling, which is just glorious. As action names go, that’s up there with Dolph’s other great movie appellations, including Wellman Anthony Santee (Joshua Tree), Major Frank Cross (The Peacekeeper) Sergeant Frank Gannon (Direct Action), Xander Ronon (Diamond Dogs) and Gunnar Jensen (The Expendables).
The only film that lets Dolph’s glittering career of macho character names down a bit is Andrew Scott (Universal Soldier), which is disappointingly anonymous, but then again, he also once wore the thong of Adam, Prince of Eternia, also known as He-Man, which is entirely the opposite of anonymous.
Max Gatling, meanwhile, is the kind of name you can imagine stamped on a pair of dog tags, or stencilled on the side of a sidewinder missile. I’m almost jealous.
Battle Of The Damned is written and directed by Christopher Hatton (who previously made Robotropolis), will commence shooting in Malaysia this summer, and will be released at some point in 2013.
Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.