Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Reviving 3 of His Beloved '80s Franchises
Arnold Schwarzenegger will be back. The actor recently revealed that he's in talks to revive three of his action franchises from the '80s.
During an appearance at the Arnold Sports Expo in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend, the 78-year-old star claimed a new Conan the Barbarian film is in the works, before sharing updates on new Predator and Commando projects as well.
Schwarzenegger got his big break as the titular role in Conan the Barbarian back in 1982, before starring in its sequel, Conan the Destroyer, two years later. Jason Momoa also played the character in a 2011 film, which went into production while Schwarzenegger was still governor of California and bombed at the box office.
At the fan convention, Schwarzenegger claimed a "fantastic writer/director" who worked on Tom Cruise's latest Mission: Impossible films was hired for the new movie, dubbed King Conan. It appears he's referring to Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote and directed Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
The actor said the film would be written "age appropriately," adding he'll "still go in there and kick some ass and stuff like that, but it will be different."
"With King Conan, of course, it's a great old story that Conan was 40 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 like that," he explained. "And now, of course, there's all kinds of special effects. The studio has plenty of money to make those movies really big."
Schwarzenegger Eyeing Commando and Predator Projects
After referencing Dan Trachtenberg's recent Predator films at the same panel, Schwarzenegger also claimed the director "wants me to be in" the next project in the series. "We've talked about it," Schwarzenegger shared to raucous applause from fans, while joking, "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," he added; no other details about all three projects have been revealed.
Schwarzenegger starred in the first Commando back in 1985.
On the Predator front, he headlined the 1987 original, but sat out the additional films. He did, however, approve his likeness for Trachtenberg's 2025 animated Predator: Killer of Killers, in which his character, Dutch, appears at the end of the movie.