Sylvester Stallone wears a Richard Mille RM 032

When set photos surfaced ahead of The Expendables 3, the watch press broke the news with a wink: if you thought Panerai again, sorry, but you are wrong. Barney Ross spends the third film hunting Conrad Stonebanks, the co-founder turned arms dealer who shoots Hale Caesar, and he hunts him wearing a Richard Mille RM 032 in titanium, 50 millimeters across and nearly 18 millimeters tall, an annual calendar flyback chronograph built as a dive watch around the automatic RMAC2 calibre. The contemporaneous census of the film's wrists priced it at 140,000 dollars and noted something else: the watch was his. Stallone wore his own Richard Mille into the role.

The paper trail proves it twice over. On December 12, 2020, Phillips sold the exact watch Stallone wore during filming at its Racing Pulse auction in New York for 151,200 dollars, consigned directly by Stallone, accompanied by a handwritten note from him and a spare Richard Mille strap. The production also kept a stand-in: when the film's wardrobe went to auction in October 2014, the lots included a Barney Ross signature replica Richard Mille chronograph on a red rubber band, described as worn through most of the film, including action sequences in tactical gear, and carrying soiling on the band and general scuffing to show for it. The real Richard Milles ran deeper than the screen: the same Phillips sale carried three more from Stallone's collection, all tourbillons, alongside the Panerai he wore in Daylight.