The Holy Trinity of ’80s Tentpoles: Willis, Stallone and Schwarzenegger

"The Expendables" brings together a plethora of action stars, most notably, those who kicked ass during the 80s. It's shaping up to be a perfect reunion of the stars we loved from back in the day.

From the footage of an unofficial trailer released a few weeks ago (watch it above), we got to see tons of action. Two big names who we know are involved with the movie were missing though: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.

Thanks to an Entertainment Weekly exclusive chat with Stallone, we now have some details on what Willis and the Governator will be playing.

EW spoke with Stallone (who’s also directing the film) over the phone after he shot the scenes with Willis and Schwarzenegger.

“I was just looking at the dailies, saying, ‘Jesus, this is amazing!’ I talked about this scene with these guys for a long time, but I never thought it would come to fruition.”

The scene that the two stars make a cameo in takes place in a church where Willis has called upon Stallone’s character to finally meet him in person, and see if he’s fit to possibly hire for a near-suicidal mission. After some smartass witty dialogue, in comes Stallone’s rival mercenary who Willis’ character has also called upon for the gig. Yes, it's Ah-nuld, and they are competing for the job.

“Bruce says ‘Well, there’s one other person I want to talk to before I hire you… And then Arnold, who plays my old rival, walks in. We have a history together. And we go back and forth and I tell him that I should have shot him a long time ago when I had the chance. Then it goes on from there. And here we are, the three of us trying to man up to one another, playing off of who we are, using our baggage in this one scene.”

Stallone says that big scene with Willis, Schwarzenegger and himself will amount to more than a cameo in the final cut of the film.

“It’s probably going to be about 5 minutes of screen time.”

Which is kind of impressive considering that Willis and Schwarzenegger were only on the L.A. set for 6 hours.

“We only had them for that one day and then Bruce had to go off to Istanbul and Arnold had to go back and do his governmental stuff. But I was impressed because they got up at 5:30 in the morning to do this.”

So, that’s the lowdown on the powerhouse scene Stallone has tried so hard to put together – I’m glad it happened and I’m excited to see the end result on the big screen.

One interesting fact that Stallone pointed out in the interview was about the box office power each of the three men hold.

“It’s funny because between the three of us, if you add up all the box office and DVD rentals and all of that, there’s like $15 billion in that one scene!”

Also participating in Sylvester Stallone’s dream project are Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Steve Austin, David Zayas, Danny Trejo and Mickey Rourke.

Are you pumped to see this cast together on screen?

"The Expendables" opens in theaters August 20, 2010.
More news to come! catch ya' later!
Sources: Screen Rant, EW