Are you ready for the Arnold Schwarzenegger renaissance? Because I know I am!
It looks like the star is set to return to not one, not two, but three of his iconic 1980s roles, despite now being in his 70s, and that’s just fine with me.
At the recent Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, the star had some very cool drops about possible upcoming roles in a sequel to Predator, Commando, and (finally?) Conan.
First up, Arnie talked about Dan Trachtenberg’s current run of Predator movies and how he has been approached for a possible return (something I reported on last year, here) as Dutch Schaeffer, who survived his confrontation with the alien hunter in the 1987 original movie: “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.
Predator Badlands producer says talks have happened about Arnold Schwarzenegger return
“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.”
Rediscoveed, indeed, as this is not one but two returns, one as Dutch but also as the awesomely named John Matrix in a Commando sequel, although he didn’t give any details on the Commando return.
Going on, he confirmed exciting things are happening, finally, with the third chapter in the Conan series: “They just hired a fantastic writer/director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies. They just hired [Christopher McQuarrie] to write and direct King Conan.”
McQuarrie, of course, as the star says here, is the man behind the recent Mission: Impossible outings as well as bringing back Top Gun, saving cinema after covid.
He was keen to add that the scripts will be aware of his being older and won’t have him handing out beatings like he did back in the day: “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.”
It is interesting to see that King Conan is back on the stove, with my last reporting on it being back in 2017, when the writer Chris Morgan called the cancellation of the movie (Legend of Conan at the time) ‘a heartbreak’. But now, almost a decade later, Schwarzenegger is finally set to reclaim the throne: “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.
SDCC 2025 Schwarzenegger’s Dutch and Glover’s Harrigan are back in the Predator franchise
“And now, of course, there are 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.”
The star didn’t mention if he had been in contact with Jim Cameron, who is currently developing a whole new take on the Terminator franchise, about a possible return, although, with the utter failure of the last couple of Terminator movies, I think it is unlikely we will see that particular T-800 returning anytime soon.
But, with the animated Predator: Badlands movie setting up the return of Dutch, and the Conan sequel in development hell for years, I think it’s very likely we will see some, if not all, of these sequels on the big screen in the near future.
And that’s just fine with me.
Thoughts? I know you have them and I wanna hear ’em all.
Source: The Arnold Fans
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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