First Look at Schwarzenegger and Stallone in ‘The Tomb’

For a man fresh out of public office, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a busy man and for a man whose career was dead in the water less than a decade ago, Sylvester Stallone is thriving. Although these two icons will soon meet face-to-face in 'The Expendables 2' (we're not counting Arnie's blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo in part one), action fans should be happy to know that this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. After all, the two of them are starring in a film called 'The Tomb' together. And hey, there's the first image of the two of them in character!

This first look was buried in the middle of a Wall Street Journal slideshow, but The Film Stage brought it to our attention, along with this detailed official synopsis:

"Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a structural engineer who is wrongly convicted of a crime. Breslin designed a variety of high tech buildings and was a top structural engineer. After Breslin was wrongly convicted, he was sent to serve his sentence in a maximum security prison of his own design. During his time in prison, Breslin has analyzed every high security prison and gained significant survival skills, but faces his biggest challenge in trying to break out of an ultimate high-tech prison that he himself designed to be escape-proof.

Not only facing the challenge of breaking out of the escape-proof prison, Breslin also has the challenge of battling the ruthless warden Hobbs (Caviezel) and his corrupt guard (Jones). Breslin is assisted in his escape attempt by fellow prisoner Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger). Rottmayer is a wise, soulful and complex inmate who fights with other prisoners to keep their humanity, whilst they are struggling to stay alive. Breslin and Rottmayer will be joined in their escape by a third prisoner that is an expert in computers (50 Cent)."

It's interesting that 'The Tomb' sounds like a far cry from the typical shoot-em-up we've come to expect from these guys. Although the 'Expendables' franchise proves that these guys aren't too old to mow down countless anonymous baddies with machine guns, watching them in a prison escape movie should prove fascinating. After all, you can't escape from a prison through sheer brawn, so the film will have to rely on these two musclebound action heroes thinking their way our of problems.

Although director Mikael Håfström can be hit and miss (his '1408' is a pretty darn solid horror movie but the less said about 'The Rite,' the better), he already wins major points by giving Arnold Schwarzenegger a goatee. After all, fans of the Austrian Oak love nothing more than to make fun of and appreciate the various quirks placed on top of the old Arnie template.

'The Tomb' is will arrive at the screen near you sometime in 2013.