Variety reports that CBS has ordered a pilot for the Sylvester Stallone-directed action drama series The International, starring Dolph Lundgren. This news arrives only months after the project was first announced. In the series, Lundgren will play Anders Soto, a covert black-ops specialist working as a U.N. troubleshooter. Stallone will produce the series through his company Balboa Productions. The International will be written and produced by Ken Sanzel, who formerly worked on crime dramas like Numb3rs and Blue Bloods.
Sylvester Stallone first gained fame in 1976 with an Academy Award-winning sports drama Rocky. Five years later, he starred as Vietnam war veteran John Rambo in the movie First Blood. Throughout the 1980s, Stallone continued filming primarily action movies (Rambo III, Cobra) and action comedies (Tango & Cash, Demolition Man). Lundgren first collaborated with Stallone in 1985 on Rocky IV where he famously plays villainous Soviet boxer, Ivan Drago. Lundgren solidified his reputation as an action movie villain in 1992 as a re-animated warrior in Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi actioner Universal Soldier. Much later, Stallone and Lundgren collaborated again in The Expendables movie series as well as in the recent sports drama Creed II.
