Arnold Schwarzenegger Could Pull A Tom Cruise With A Conan Reboot
Take up the sword.
Sword-and-sandals fantasy is making a tentative comeback with this year’s Masters of the Universe, but will the genre’s resurgence stop there? Audiences may still have a hunger for epic battles on sprawling worlds, as sci-fi hits like Dune have proven. Denis Villeneuve’s celebrated remake has revived the franchise in a major way — can the same be done for another forgotten ‘80s adventure?
Just as the Dune franchise got a second life 40 years after its first outing, Arnold Schwarzenegger is hoping for the same for some of his most popular action franchises. During an appearance at this year’s Arnold Sports Festival, the actor, bodybuilder, and former governor hinted at three potential pathways for a big-screen comeback.
“Fox Studios has kind of rediscovered ‘Arnold,’” Schwarzenegger revealed. While the door is reportedly open for him to appear in the next Predator film, and even in a sequel to Commando, he’s also working on the next chapter of the Conan the Barbarian series. According to Schwarzenegger, the film will be written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, an instrumental force in the resurgence of another major action star.
McQuarrie has been Tom Cruise’s go-to guy for the past decade, penning and occasionally directing installments of the Mission: Impossible franchise and co-writing the script to Top Gun: Maverick. “They just hired him to write and direct King Conan,” Schwarzenegger said.
A new Conan film could bring an underrated genre back to life for good.
King Conan will reportedly catch up with the titular warrior after 40 years of reigning peacefully as the king of Aquilonia. When he’s unceremoniously ousted from the kingdom, Conan has to fight his way back, bringing “all kinds of madness, violence, magic, and creatures” back into his life. Schwarzenegger certainly seems eager to pick up the role again, even while acknowledging that any third film would be a bit different than those that came before. Schwarzenegger starred in two films that adapted Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantasy character, Conan: Conan the Barbarian in 1982, and Conan the Destroyer in 1984; the latter of which was produced by Raffaella De Laurentiis, which she made back-to-back with the 1984 Dune. Unlike David Lynch’s Dune, Conan the Destroyer was a modest box office success, earning about $30 million against a budget of $18 million. In 2011, Jason Momoa starred in a Conan reboot, which didn’t fare as well, earning $63 million against a budget of $90 million. (Though one wonders how a Momoa Conan would do in today’s market.) So, after so many years, is the world ready for a new Conan?
Schwarzenegger is far from retired from the action scene, but he can’t exactly do everything he used to in the ‘80s and ‘90s. McQuarrie will have to “write [King Conan] to be age-appropriate. I’ll still go in there and kick some ass, but it will be different... They don’t write them like I’m 40 years old.”
With no official confirmation from McQuarrie, Schwarzenegger’s comments should be taken with a barbarian-sized grain of salt. There’s every chance that King Conan will go the way of all the other sequels the actor has spent years lobbying to make... but if it does get off the ground, it’d be kind of amazing. The Conan films represent a kind of bygone era that deserves a comeback. They’re massively underrated adventures, and though that brand of adventure has gone all but extinct, it couldn’t hurt to try to resurrect it. Stranger things have happened, and if it means seeing Schwarzenegger with a massive sword and tiny pants again, it’s well worth the attempt.
