Dolph Lundgren spent decades playing characters who seemed nearly impossible to break. The new trailer for Dolph: Unbreakable shows the 68-year-old action star in a very different position, fighting back tears as he revisits a cancer battle that once left him wondering whether he would survive long enough to see the documentary reach audiences.
The project did not begin as a film about cancer. Lundgren said production started in 2020 as a look back at a career that had already included nearly 100 movies, but his worsening health changed what the filmmakers were documenting. By 2021, he told the team they might need to focus more heavily on his illness because, as he recalled to Entertainment Weekly, “I may not be around for the premiere.”
Lundgren’s cancer journey actually began years earlier. He was first diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2015 and later entered remission, but doctors discovered additional tumors in 2020. As his condition worsened, he was eventually told he might have only two or three years to live before a second medical opinion led to a different treatment approach.
Lundgren announced in November 2024 that he was cancer-free. Now one of the most difficult periods of his life is part of a documentary that also features his wife Emma Krokdal and longtime action-star contemporaries Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
The Documentary Became a Different Movie While Cameras Were Rolling
Lundgren said the original plan was relatively straightforward. Tell the story of the Swedish martial artist and engineering student who became Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and spent the next four decades building an action-movie career.
His cancer battle forced the filmmakers to rethink that structure while production was already underway. Lundgren described the documentary as essentially being “reborn” once his health became a central part of the story.
Some of the most personal footage could not even be captured by the regular documentary crew. Lundgren explained that Krokdal filmed material during hospital visits because COVID-era restrictions made bringing cameras into medical settings difficult.
The resulting film follows far more than his professional highs. Its official TIFF listing describes a story stretching from Lundgren’s difficult childhood in Sweden to international fame while examining the personal struggles hidden behind his action-star image, including childhood trauma, chronic injuries and cancer.
Lundgren Says He Once Expected to ‘Go Out Like a Viking’
One of the trailer’s most striking moments shows Lundgren overcome with emotion. For an actor whose most famous character barely spoke while physically intimidating Rocky Balboa, that vulnerability is not something he wanted hidden from the documentary.
Lundgren told EW that he had been emotional since childhood and described martial arts and acting as ways to express feelings he once struggled to process. During the worst period of his illness, he said he thought he was going to “go out like a Viking, in a blaze of glory.”
Surviving changed his understanding of strength. Lundgren said he now sees value in being emotionally open and believes that kind of vulnerability can require more strength than simply appearing physically tough. He has also spoken openly about the psychological aftermath of confronting his own mortality. Lundgren told EW that he undergoes cancer survivorship therapy and compared the experience with a form of post-traumatic stress that can follow a brush with death.
His approach to his body has changed as well. In a 2025 health update, Lundgren said he was doing “very well” and exercising four or five times a week, but no longer pushed himself as hard as he once did. He described himself as being “a little kinder” to his body after the experience.
Sylvester Stallone Had an Emotional Reaction of His Own
Dolph: Unbreakable also brings in several men who helped define the same era of action cinema. Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Van Damme appear in the documentary, giving the film direct access to people who knew Lundgren while his tough-guy image was being created.
Lundgren said Stallone’s reaction to learning about his cancer was especially memorable. The two had shared what he described as a tough-guy camaraderie for years, but their relationship took on a different dimension after his diagnosis.
Lundgren recalled being in a Beverly Hills store the day after telling Stallone when the Rocky star called him in tears. “How are you feeling? I have to see you,” Lundgren remembered Stallone saying. The reaction caught him off guard because they had never spoken to each other on that emotional level.
Lundgren told EW that the two have become much closer since then. He also described Schwarzenegger as a longtime friend, noting that they first met before Lundgren entered the movie business when he was dating Grace Jones and visited the set of 1984’s Conan the Destroyer.
Lundgren Is Now Telling the Story in Both a Film and a Book
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The documentary arrives during a period in which Lundgren is putting much more of his private life on record. His memoir, Fights Worth Fighting: Finding Strength in Struggle, is scheduled for September 22 and covers his Hollywood career, personal struggles and cancer experience.
The book follows his November 2024 announcement that he was cancer-free. PEOPLE reported that Lundgren shared the news from UCLA shortly before undergoing a procedure to remove his final remaining tumor, describing the nine-year journey as a “rough ride” that taught him to live more fully in the present.
His health continued to look encouraging the following year. In September 2025, Lundgren told PEOPLE that doctors considered him NED, meaning “no evidence of disease.” Dolph: Unbreakable, directed by Andrew Holmes, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025. The documentary now reaches VOD and digital platforms on October 6, giving Lundgren the premiere he once feared he might not live to see.