King Conan lives!
Legendary action star Arnold Schwarzenegger has shared exciting updates about several projects that would see him reprise some of his most iconic roles, including one that was thought to be shelved for good a couple of years back.
The Terminator star spoke to The ArnoldFans.com during this weekend’s Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, and revealed that the elusive King Conan movie is moving forward at 20th Century Studios with none other than Christopher McQuarrie on board to write and direct.
"They just hired a fantastic writer/director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies. They just hired him to write and direct King Conan. Now, what they do is that they write the part. They don’t write them like I’m forty years old, you write it to be age-appropriate. I’ll still go in there and kick some ass but it will be different.
With King Conan, it's a great old story that Conan was forty years as King and now he gets forced out of the kingdom and there’s conflict, of course, but somehow he comes back and there’s all kinds of madness, violence, magic and creatures and stuff like that. And now, of course, there’s all kinds of special effects. The studio has plenty of money to make those movies really big so I’m looking forward to all of those projects."
There has been no official announcement relating to the Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer follow-up, but now that Arnie appears to have let the cat out of the bag, we may hear something from the trades fairly soon.
Schwarzenegger also confirmed that he has spoken to Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg about returning as Dutch in a future movie, and that there is a script for a Commando sequel.
"They did an additional Predator, and the director (Dan Trachtenberg) has been doing a great job of that. Now, he wants me to be in the next Predator. We’ve talked about it. As a matter of fact, FOX Studios has kind of rediscovered 'Arnold'. They’ve come to me and said, 'We want you to do Predator, we just got a script for you to do Commando 2’."
Schwarzenegger played the lead role of Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer in John McTiernan's original 1987 Predator movie, which still marks the character's only live-action appearance in the franchise. However, a cryogenically-frozen Dutch did show up in an epilogue scene from the animated Killer of Killers movie, along with Danny Glover's Lt. Mike Harrigan from Predator 2 (1990) and Amber Midthunder's Naru from Prey (2022).
Trachtenberg has previously revealed that he reached out to Schwarzenegger to get his approval to use his likeness in the scene, and later said that he would be interested in "cooking some stuff up" for the actor in a future project.
This was before the filmmaker signed a deal with Paramount Pictures, but Trachtenberg recently clarified that this doesn't mean he won't helm another Predator movie.
"I am simultaneously figuring out all of the next steps for the Predator franchise. I’m in this moment that I was in when Prey came out, where I was like, 'What do I do next?' and got very excited about a Predator protagonist and got very excited about an animated movie with multiple time periods, and then they just happened to go at the same time."
"And so that’s where I’m at with Predator now, is, 'Oh my God, there are so many exciting things we can do,'" he added. "But also now I have this deal at Paramount where I’m thrilled, and they are thrilled to make some of the original movies that I’ve always had in my head and heart."