We may finally have some good news concerning the future of the “Conan the Barbarian” franchise (based on the iconic Robert E. Howard books), as star Arnold Schwarzenegger is revealing that 20th Century Studios and Christopher McQuarrie are seemingly teaming up to finally bring the long-delayed “King Conan” to the big screen.
Speaking with TheArnoldFans at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, over the weekend, the fan site was able to get some neat updates concerning the action star’s future at 20th Century Studios (Schwarzenegger keeps calling the studio by its former name, Fox)
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“They just hired a fantastic writer/director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies,” says Schwarzenegger. “They just hired him [Christopher McQuarrie] 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.”
UPDATE: THR and other trade outlets have confirmed that McQuarrie is indeed attached to write and direct “King Conan.” There is also a video from the Arnold Sports Festival panel, where Arnold dished multiple project updates.
McQuarrie isn’t exactly known for swords and sorcery films, but what the heck?
Before we get too excited this isn’t the first go-around as the “King Conan” project’s origin goes back to the original 1982 film and there had been plans to make “Conan” movies the next James Bond franchise, leading up to “King Conan,” but after the double-punch of “Conan The Destroyer” and “Red Sonja” misfiring the audience enthusiasm dwindled. Many years after the Jason Momoa reboot failed to connect with audiences, Universal Pictures then tried to resurrect “King Conan” with plans to have the aging actor back in the role and shoot on location in New Zealand, only for that to get nixed over budgetary issues, and the “Conan” rights would eventually sit at Netflix until they lapsed not too long ago.
That’s not it, as he also teased a return to the “Predator” franchise (something that goes back to “Predator 2” but has never materialized in live-action after multiple attempts to bring his character Dutch back to the fold) and is even talking up the possibility of a “Commando 2.”
“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.'”
With that in mind, this is certainly a surprising update, but until cameras roll on “King Conan,” we won’t get our hopes up too much. This also comes after James Cameron has ruled out Arnold’s return for his gestating “Terminator” film.
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