Sylvester Stallone Officially Ends His 20-Year Rivalry With Arnold Schwarzenegger

Published Nov 11, 2026, 9:30 AM EST

In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 4000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix's Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio. 

Sign in to your Collider account

Sylvester Stallone is never far from the headlines, and not simply by dominating the streaming charts with the current fourth season of Taylor Sheridan's Tulsa King. Recently, after it was confirmed that his daughter, Scarlet Rose Stallone, had been promoted to series regular for Tulsa King Season 5, Stallone faced backlash online through claims of nepotism. Never one to shy from conflict, Rocky bit back, saying, "Oh please, you’re not a good parent if you haven’t performed a little nepotism. Then obviously you don’t care about your kids, because they come first."

But in the pantheon of Stallone headlines and controversies, these nepotism claims are merely a drop in the ocean. Undeniably, one of the most infamous periods in Sly's career was during his two-decade-long feud with fellow action icon Arnold Schwarzenegger, which reportedly lasted until the latter ran for governor of California. In the 1980s and 1990s, incidents of one-upmanship were reported during a busy time in both men's careers, although, in retrospect, it seems that such a rivalry led to both producing better-quality work and helped shape their careers.

In a new interview on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, Stallone has opened up on one of cinema's greatest rivalries, which he admitted "wasn't put to bed until 20 years later." "You know, we were very confrontational. Because you have two people arriving at the beginning of a different genre and we both want to be in charge of that genre," he said, continuing:

"I never wanted to be an action guy, but I did ‘First Blood’ and I said, ‘This is interesting because action films, if done right, are modern mythology. It’s like what they used to do, you know, ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ and Hercules and Achilles.’ So, I see this guy, and I could tell right away he’s going to be a problem."

COLLIDERInteractive

Impact

Action/Quizzes/Your Franchise

Collider QuizWhat Action Series
Would You Thrive In?8 Questions · 4 FranchisesFour franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the professional with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to go down. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.The Four

Wick

Fast

Mission

Die Hard

Find Your Franchise

Beat 01 / 080% Shot

Question 01PRESENCE

01How does a room know you've walked into it?Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognizes me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said.BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something.CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived.DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 02 / 0812% Shot

Question 02COMBAT

02It turns physical. What does your fighting look like?Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started.BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup.CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving.DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more punishment than I deal and I still don't go down.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 03 / 0825% Shot

Question 03CREW

03Who is standing beside you when it starts?Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favors and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone.BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them.CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself.DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 04 / 0838% Shot

Question 04PRESSURE

04It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright?Act two exists to find out what you're really made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction.BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line.CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me.DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 05 / 0850% Shot

Question 05WHEELS

05There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how?No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it.BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion.CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorized last night. And then off a cliff.DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 06 / 0862% Shot

Question 06ORDERS

06How do you feel about the people giving the orders?There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me.BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out.CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second.DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one standing on broken glass.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 07 / 0875% Shot

Question 07MOTIVE

07Underneath all of it, what are you doing this for?The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since.BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything.CThe conviction that if I stop, people pay for it. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else.DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defense.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 08 / 0888% Shot

Question 08LEGEND

08When the credits roll, what do people say about you?Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to.BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table.CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me.DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to stop.

← BackPick one, then Next

Reveal My Franchise

Casting Has Been CompletedYour Franchise Is

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

2014-2023John WickJohn Wick to Chapter 4Reasonable to the line. Immovable past it.

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.Why You Would Thrive Here

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honors every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

The CodeNo Wasted MotionSay It Quietly

2001-2023Fast & FuriousThe Fast and the Furious to Fast XThe mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its real subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
• You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Found FamilyRide TogetherPhysics Optional

1996-2025Mission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible to The Final ReckoningYou have never once delegated the cliff.

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Over-PreparedOwn The RiskStill Running

1988-2013Die HardDie Hard to A Good Day to Die HardYou declined to be the person who let it happen.

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.Why You Would Thrive Here

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outnumbered, out-planned, battered, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

Wrong PlaceImprovisesStill Standing

Closest Matches

1· · ·0%

2· · ·0%

3· · ·0%

Retake The QuizCopied

A Collider InteractiveCOLLIDERMore quizzes at collider.com

The Stallone-Schwarzenegger Rivalry Became Bitter

They may have eventually appeared in four movies together, with the pair co-leading 2013's Escape Plan, but there was once a time when the feud between Stallone and Schwarzenegger was so bitter that the concept of them sharing a set felt impossible. "You know, we were at the Golden Globe Awards, and he’s sitting there and he’s eyeballing me, and — we call that stink eye — I said, ‘Okay, all right. I got it, pal.’ And then he wins," Stallone added in the podcast appearance.

As mentioned previously, the bitterness of this rivalry pushed both to craft some of their career-best work. "We’re both physical, and now, who’s going to be the vanguard, the leader in that genre?" Stallone added. "So I do Rambo, he does Commando, and it went back and forth, back and forth, on and off screen. It was very contentious, trust me. Which I enjoyed."

For more of the latest stories, stay tuned to Collider.