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You have to give action cinema and all-around Hollywood and pop culture icon Arnold Schwarzenegger credit as the man is still giving fans teases of returning to former glory with some of his most popular IPs. The biggest one is a direct sequel to his Conan the Barbarian which has been in developmental hell for what appears to be several decades with multiple mentions from Arnie over the years that it was going tom happen. I could go into the history of the start/stop, love/hate relationship there has been with this follow up but I personally do not have that much time.
Well, Arnie is at it again and he was on hand like he always is at this past weekend’s Arnold Sports Festival which actually is held close to where I grew up. The annual event is held in Columbus, Ohio of all places and I was born and raised farther north by Cleveland, and I actually had the opportunity to attend the event years ago and actually saw Schwarzenegger in person albeit from far away. It was during my run as a martial arts instructor and school manager, and we attended the festival several times to help promote the martial arts and the business.
Enough of that though and let’s talk what Arnie said during an interview which had the icon teasing King Conan once again and even insinuated that a major Hollywood director has been attached to lead the long-delayed project. For those not in the know, King Conan was set up as a direct sequel to the first Conan film which would ignore the less welcomed sequel Conan the Destroyer. This direct sequel would see Arnold as an older Conan navigating a savage world of swords, sorcery and violence.
During the interview, Arnie mentioned that none other than Mission: Impossible franchise director Christopher McQuarrie has been tapped tom write and direct the highly anticipated follow up.
“They just hired a fantastic writer/director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies,” says Arnold. “They just hired him (Christopher McQuarrie) to write and direct King Conan,” Schwarzenegger stated.
Now take this with a grain of salt as there have been no official announcements to the fact and if this is true, there would be a massive online media presence for it. Could it be that Schwarzenegger slipped and announced it too early? That could be but I don’t think that anyone would reprimand him to his face so we shall wait and see if this is in fact…well…fact. I could turn on my computer later today or tomorrow and see just that but, in the meantime, I’m not holding my breath.
If that wasn’t enough, Arnie even teased a return to the Predator franchise as well along with…wait for it…a sequel which would see him returning as John Matrix for Commando 2!
“They did an additional Predator, and the director (Dan Trachtenberg) has been doing a great job of that,” Arnold said. “Now, he wants me to be in the next Predator. We’ve talked about it. As a matter of fact, FOX studios have 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’.”
Now I know what you all are saying. Hey! Arnold is in his seventies so how could any live action follow-ups like this work for the aging action and fitness icon? Well, he has an answer for that as well. Like he wouldn’t.
“Now, what they do is that they write the part,” Arnold explains. “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.”
Makes perfect sense to me. Now can Arnold pull off physically demanding roles like these now? Most importantly, does anyone want to see him do it now? Well, if you’re like me and are a massive fan of action cinema and grew up watching him then the answer is a resounding HELL YES! If it’s done the right way of course. Arnold could still get into enough shape to run the gauntlet again, but this is all just here say right now so buckle up to see if anything transpires from this. Lock ‘N Load and stay tuned…
Source: The Arnold Fans
