Hot off the heels of Van Damme’s indy success story JCVD, the muscles from Brussels is trying to get a true sequel to his first hit Bloodsport greenlit.

From AintItCool -

Jean-Claude Van Damme has confirmed to totalfilm.com that he is working on Bloodsport 2, a true sequel to his first hit movie.

“You know, like, we’re gonna do Bloodsport 2,” he told us in a recent interview. “Which was my first movie. And I want to do it now in a very mature way, where the guy from Bloodsport is a complete bum, maybe abusing his son.”

The original Bloodsport spawned three follow-ups, but Jean-Claude was connected to none of them.

Despite the recent success of latest movie JCVD, Van Damme is encountering some resistance from the studio.

“They told me, ‘No, no, no! You cannot make a movie in America where a father is abusing his son physically! It’s wrong.”

“And you cannot be a guy on drugs doing karate and shit like that.’ I said, ’Why? Why? Tell me why.’

“It’s against the rules of success. But I believe the other rules of success. To show something real.”

I really enjoyed the deliberate pacing and self-consciousness of JCVD, but is piggy-backing that style onto an already successful film just because it worked once really a good idea? Is it any better than the people who take the name of a film and churn out sequels without regard for quality or respect for the original. I think if Van Damme is going to make a sequel to Bloodsport (one of the all time great dumb action movies) and he wants to make it real, he is going to have to think long and hard about what would be real for that character and where he can take the story, and not just repeat his I’m-playing-a-character-but-really-you-all-know-it’s-about-my-life performance from JCVD.

There are too few truly fun action films around these days and as someone who grew up with cheesy 80s action as a large part of my movie diet, I’d love to see someone update the genre and manage to keep the heart in the right place.