This should do the trick:

$ react-native init newproject --version X.XX.X

There is no way to specify react native version in expo cli. But you can specify SDK version in expo cli. Each SDK corresponds to particular react native version you can find the react native version for the expo sdk here(https://github.com/expo/react-native/releases)

For example, if you want to work with react native 0.61.4, you can use expo sdk-37.0.1

expo init --template [email protected]

EDIT as of now, it depends on how you start your package manager.

npm create-expo-app [name] --template blank@45
yarn create-expo-app [name] --template blank@45
pnpm create-expo-app [name] --template blank@45
npx create-expo-app [name] --template blank@45

Unfortunately there's no nice way of doing an npm search but the pattern for the template is anything that starts with expo-template is a potential candidate. The author you'd be looking for is brentvayne from Expo team. Reference:

1. https://github.com/expo/react-native/releases
2. https://docs.expo.io/workflow/upgrading-expo-sdk-walkthrough/?redirected
3. https://github.com/expo/expo-cli/issues/142

There is a new parameter in react-native init that allows just this. Try:

react-native init --version="[email protected]" MyNewApp

Here my source. I have successfully tested it with react-native-cli 2.0.1.