The Real Reason For Sylvester Stallone And Bruce Willis' Long-Running Feud

“Greedy and lazy... A sure formula for a career failure.” This is what Stallone once posted on Twitter, and there was no doubt in fans’ minds that the harsh words were directed at Willis. The next thing we knew, Willis had disappeared from The Expendables franchise. But what had caused these Hollywood superstars to fall out in such a violent fashion?

Up to the point that The Expendables 3 was released in 2014, Stallone was having to work extra hard to prevent his star from waning. His career had been a bit hit and miss during the early 2000s, so a lot was seemingly riding on the success of the franchise. While audiences had finally begun to appreciate his performance in Cop Land, 2008’s Rambo reboot didn’t achieve the acclaim he'd probably hoped for. But it was a different story for Willis.

Right from the early days in his career, Willis was making the big bucks. In 1988 he asked for and got $5 million to star in Die Hard — a film that Stallone, possibly much to his annoyance, actually turned down! And the hits just kept on coming, particularly in the 2000s.

In this decade, Willis continued to show off his versatility. He was much more than just an action hero. While Sin City and Red did indeed show the actor’s tough side, vulnerability was his keynote in Moonrise Kingdom, and he brought back his earlier comedic side for The Whole Ten Yards. When The Expendables came round, Willis was on top of his game.

Given Stallone’s down period, perhaps it’s not too shocking that he admitted to feeling jealous of other action stars. And perhaps Willis was included in this bunch. He told contactmusic.com, “I was very competitive with them and very jealous if they got a better movie or script than me. That’s what made us push so hard.” And it seems there was one star he was particularly envious of.

Speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone said, “He was far more diligent than me; I was too reckless. He’s very machine-like and I did consider him an enemy. But, looking back, it was a good enemy.” But there couldn’t have been any bad blood between them, as Schwarzenegger wasn’t cut out of The Expendables franchise in the same way that Willis was.

Previously, Willis and Stallone had worked well together. As Stallone told the Hindustan Times, “I had written Bruce and Arnold into the movie in two different scenes but, to give Bruce credit, he said, ‘Why not put us in the same room?’ If you’re going to get away from Rambo, you have to have that touch of humor in there.” But this harmony seemingly wouldn’t last long. And it may not have been helped by the bizarre history between two other members of the cast.

In the past, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren’s “friendship” had been very confusing. Van Damme, for the purposes of promotion, had been a bitter enemy of Lundgren’s in the 1990s. In 1992 they had clashed at Cannes, when they’d had a potentially staged fight in public. Still, whether it was real or not back then, it turned out that there was some bad blood between them.

French magazine Cine-News reported that there had been conflict over Universal Soldier, which had featured them both. The report said, “Van Damme supervised the final cuts, and Lundgren isn’t completely satisfied... [with] the result. Machiavellian, Van Damme… informs his press attachés that a fight is likely to break, and in the limo that drives him with Dolph to the hall, he... [winds] up his stooge.” 

But if any angst between Van Damme and Lundgren remained, it was overshadowed by the Stallone and Willis drama. The apparent bad blood between the pair arose when the time came to make The Expendables 3 in 2013. Willis supposedly did something that infuriated Stallone, which kicked off their feud.

Apparently, the cause of his upset was Willis’ financial demands. The movie’s producers had offered Willis $3 million, which isn't too shabby for four days’ work! But reportedly, that was not enough for the star of Die Hard. 

An insider on the film alleged to E Online!, “He said he’d drop out unless he got $4 million. A million dollars a day. Stallone and everybody else involved said, ‘No.’” And it didn’t end at simply booting Willis off the cast list.

No, Stallone did not let it rest at that. He popped up on Twitter, and he certainly had something he needed to get off his chest. There he wrote, “WILLIS OUT… HARRISON FORD IN!!!! GREAT NEWS!!!!! Been waiting years for this!!!!” And without naming Willis, he followed up with, “GREEDY AND LAZY… A SURE FORMULA FOR CAREER FAILURE.”

Stallone’s publicist later told The Huffington Post that the target of the tweet had been Willis. None of the people involved with the film commented on it, though. As for the superstar himself, his representative kept quiet about what, if anything, Willis made of it. Not that staying mum prevented the insider from speculating about him.

Nope, the insider told E! Online, “I think [Willis] was pretty surprised he was replaced in 72 hours by Harrison Ford — a better actor, a much nicer person, and a more interesting direction for the film.” Fiery stuff, but still there was no reaction from the Willis camp to Stallone’s tweet.

Perhaps Willis felt that the facts spoke for themselves. In the year before, he’d made five films, although in 2014 he’d only perform in two. Still, all told, he’s been a lead in more than 60 movies. And as for career failure…well, his films have raked in more than $5 billion, with plenty of cash and rave reviews to show off.

When Willis did respond, he didn’t talk about Stallone’s tweet, but about the whole business of action movies. He told the Daily Express, “Explosions are one of the most boring parts of my job. When you have seen a few fireballs it’s not exciting anymore. Part of my audience enjoys the explosions, but to be honest I’m a bit bored with it.”

But Willis accepted that action was where the money was. He said, “I’ve worked in all sorts of films but the action movies are the ones that generate the most revenue. I like to earn lots of money, but I do all types: small productions, mega-projects, medium-sized, even science fiction.” And in 2013, he bested himself yet again.

During that year, he made 3 action movies! Although those films seems to go well, Willis is no stranger to on-set conflict. The star clashed with Cybill Shepherd during Moonlighting, and a source claimed that the duo's strained relationship led to a toxic work environment. And he didn’t hold back when discussing Michael Bay on the Ain’t It Cool message boards, where he said he’d “never work with [Bay] again” after his experience making Armageddon.

And the superstar is not always the most gracious interviewee, as the U.K.’s A.J. Odudu found in 2009. She told U.K. channel ITV2’s Celebrity Karaoke Club, “I’ll tell you all: Bruce Willis — absolutely appalling. I was interviewing him in a press junket. They give you three minutes, and they vet all your questions — he knows what’s coming.”

A similar review followed a 2013 interview on the U.K. chat show The One Show. Presenter Alex Jones struggled through a meeting with a seemingly bored Willis. Afterwards, she tweeted, “Bruce Willis has tired me out. It was a bit of a challenge, to say the least.” Willis said sorry, and he claimed jetlag had been the culprit.

Later that year, Willis proved a tough interviewee again when U.K. radio station Magic FM chatted with him about Red 2. Not only did he tell presenter Jamie Edwards that he wished he wasn’t doing the interview, but he had some unflattering comments to make about the questions!

For instance, when asked which location he’d liked best, Willis said, “Istanbul.” But none of Red 2 had been filmed there! Willis told the presenter, “Has any actor ever told you this Jamie? This part is not acting. The fun part is over. We’re just selling the film now. Sales.” Bringing in the big bucks is clearly a high priority for Willis — as Stallone seemingly discovered.

Even so, Stallone seemed to realize he’d gone too far with his comments. He kept away from Twitter after the incident, and in 2014 he said that he was going to swear off the platform for good. He admitted to the Daily Mail that he “really get[s] in trouble” when he uses social media.

The superstar was only seen on Twitter a couple of times in the months after he slammed Willis. And that was only for promotional purposes. He later noted, “I think George Clooney says it best. You’ve got to be an idiot if you use Twitter, and you wake up in the morning sober, and you realize your career is over.”

Eventually, Stallone’s guilty conscience must have gotten the better of him. In November 2014 he tweeted, “Made up with BRUCE W.” And this time he had praise for his rival, adding, “A stand-up guy, my mistake.” So the feud came to an end, although the two have not yet appeared in a film together since, and sadly, they’re not likely to now.

When Stallone heard about Willis’ diagnosis, he was quick to send his love. He posted a series of throwback photos on Instagram with the caption, “We go back a long way, praying for the best for you and your wonderful family…” So it seems what occurred between the pair is truly water under the bridge. But what of Stallone and Schwarzenegger?

So far, Stallone’s other nemesis did not provoke any outbursts on Twitter. But that could change if Schwarzenegger decides to pull another huge prank on his fellow action-hero co-star like he did in the early ’90s. Most fans only learned about what went down in 2017. Let’s just say it’s probably a good thing social media wasn’t around yet!

Around this time, Stallone and Schwarzenegger were constantly battling to be the best. “We were attacking each other in the press relentlessly,” Schwarzenegger recalled at the Beyond Fest film festival in 2017. “We called each other names and called out our weak points, and it was so competitive.” The actor therefore came up with an ingenious and slightly evil plan to get one over on Stallone.

The story goes that sometime in the early 1990s, Schwarzenegger was given the script for a prospective action-comedy movie entitled Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. But he was not impressed by what he read. “I read the script. It was so bad,” he told the audience at Beyond Fest. “You know, I’ve also done some movies that went right in the toilet, right? That were bad. But this was really bad.”

Though he didn’t like the sound of the movie or want to be in it, an idea came into Schwarzenegger’s mind on how to get one over on Stallone. As he explained, “So, I went in – this was during our war – I said to myself, I’m going to leak out that I have tremendous interest [in the movie]. I know the way it works in Hollywood.”

So Schwarzenegger let it be known publicly that he was keen to star in the movie. But he had a cunning plan to ensure that Stallone would be the one that the film’s producers turned to. “I would then ask for a lot of money,” he revealed. “So, then they’d say, ‘Let’s go give it to Sly. Maybe we can get him for cheaper.’”

The Terminator star’s devious sleight of hand evidently worked the way that he had intended. Speaking before the gripped audience at Beyond Fest, he said, “So, they told Sly, ‘Schwarzenegger’s interested. Here’s the press clippings. He’s talked about that. If you want to grab that one away from him, that is available.’”

Stallone walked straight into Schwarzenegger’s carefully laid trap. “He went for it! He totally went for it,” Schwarzenegger explained. “A week later, I heard about it, ‘Sly is signing now to do this movie.’ And I said, ‘Yes!’” As if to emphasize the point, the star pumped his fist at this point.

The film itself was a total failure, deemed “thoroughly witless and thuddingly unfunny” by Rotten Tomatoes, on which it holds a shocking 8 percent critical rating. It fared little better with audiences, and worst still, it earned Sly the humiliating Worst Actor gong at the 1993 Razzie Awards. Stallone was left with a huge egg on his face. Schwarzenegger had outmaneuvered his rival.

Thankfully, though, Stallone’s career would recover from the unmitigated disaster of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Better still, his ugly war of attrition with Schwarzenegger would eventually cool off. It was about time, really, for the two biggest action superstars in Hollywood to reconcile.

The starting point of that reconciliation can perhaps be traced to the early 1990s, when the pair teamed with Willis up in the business world. The launch of restaurant chain Planet Hollywood made it necessary for the pair to be civil, as they were required to do many promotional photoshoots together. And as we know, they eventually teamed up on the big screen. Talk about a happy ending!