Arnold Schwarzenegger is eyeing a major Hollywood comeback, revealing that he is currently in talks to return to three of his most famed franchises: Conan the Barbarian, Commando, and Predator.
Long before the former California governor, 78, entered politics, he was one of the industry’s most bankable action stars throughout the Eighties and Nineties. He had his breakout with 1982’s action-adventure Conan the Barbarian, before achieving global fame in James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984). He continued his ascent with lead roles in Commando (1985) and Predator (1987).
While it has been more than five years since Schwarzenegger appeared on the big screen, he recently teased that he has plans to do just that.
“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,” The Running Man star said at this year’s Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, according to Variety.
“As a matter of fact, Fox Studios has kind of rediscovered Arnold,” he added. “They’ve come to me and said, ‘We want you to do Predator, we just got a script for you to do Commando 2.’”
Schwarzenegger said that for the Conan sequel, the studio “just hired a fantastic writer/director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies to write and direct King Conan.”
He clarified that all three roles will be “different” and written to better reflect his current age. “They don’t write them like I’m 40 years old. You write it to be age-appropriate,” he explained. “I’ll still go in there and kick some ass but it will be different.”
Addressing the plans for King Conan, Schwarzenegger said: “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 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.”
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Schwarzenegger portrayed the powerful warrior Conan in Conan the Barbarian, which followed his character’s quest to avenge the genocide of his people and his parents at the hands of a snake cult. He reprised the role in 1984’s Conan the Destroyer.
