Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to reprise one of his iconic roles, and no, it’s not the Terminator. Remember the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie, where Arnold played the titular character, captivating audiences with his warrior-like physique and brutal swordfighting sequences. Well, it seems like he will be back again to don the role of the Cimmerian warrior, popularized in the comics written by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s.
Schwarzenegger to return to iconic Conan franchise
Sources have confirmed to Deadline that a new Conan the Barbarian film, titled King Conan, is in development, with Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to play the title role. The American film production company 20th Century Studios will produce the film, and the Mission: Impossible franchise’s Christopher McQuarrie has been roped in to write and direct it.
At the recently held Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Schwarzenegger himself revealed the broad themes the movie will cover, promising plenty of action and adventure. “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.”
The sword-and-sorcery action film was first released in 1982 and propelled “Arnie” to movie stardom. The revenge story grossed over $68 million worldwide, and a sequel followed in 1984, titled Conan the Destroyer. While the first film became a cult classic, the second was moderately successful at the box office. Schwarzenegger reportedly planned to make a threequel, Conan the Conqueror, in the late ’80s, but it never materialized.
The story of Conan the Barbarian first appeared in the magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s, and since then, the fantasy warrior-adventurer from a mythical ancient world has captured the imagination of audiences.
Based on what the Austrian-American Hollywood icon said, the film will focus on an older King Conan who is forced into a conflict filled with magic, monsters, and violence to reclaim what was once his. Now, it remains to be seen whether the project comes to fruition and, if it does, whether it will eclipse the previous iterations in terms of box-office success.