Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t ready to let Conan the Barbarian fade into the past. Over 40 years after he first swung that badass broadsword on the big screen, the action legend is still holding out hope for a return to Robert E. Howard’s brutal fantasy world.
While promoting FUBAR Season 2 on Netflix, Schwarzenegger reflected on his career and admitted there are some roles he’d love to revisit… starting with Conan.
“Sometimes I wish that we could do more Conan sequels, because I think that if you have the right director and the right writing, there could be a really, really good franchise to continue King Conan and stuff like that,” Schwarzenegger said in an interview with Collider. “So I mean, there’s a lot of movies that have done that could have a sequel.”
The original Conan the Barbarian hit theaters in 1982, directed by John Milius and co-written by Oliver Stone. It made Schwarzenegger a household name, leading to a sequel in 1984, Conan the Destroyer. A third film, Conan the Conqueror, was planned but ultimately morphed into the 1997 flop Kull the Conqueror.
The franchise didn’t die, though. Conan returned in comics, novels, games, two animated shows, and even a short-lived live-action TV series in the ’90s. Jason Momoa tried his hand at the role in 2011, but the reboot wasn’t that good. In 2020, Netflix and Prime Video both flirted with fresh adaptations, but those talks seem to have stalled.
There was a moment in 2012 when the stars almost aligned for Schwarzenegger’s comeback as an older, battle-hardened Conan. The project, titled The Legend of Conan, was set to follow the King Conan storyline, with Chris Morgan and Frederick Malmberg producing and Andrea Berloff writing the script. Schwarzenegger hyped it for years, but by 2017, Morgan confirmed Universal had killed the film.
Morgan previously teased how the movie would open: “It opens with this [hand on the chin]. It’s where you have to. It’s the sequel that we were promised and never got. I’m 11 when my father took me to see Conan the Barbarian which you should never take an 11-year-old kid to.
“It was a life changing thing. It’s an unbelievable movie. It comes back to [director John] Milius, right? There’s nobody better and it’s a real movie. It’s a truthful movie. Chris and I from the very beginning said there’s no reason to do it unless it’s a worthy sequel to Milius’s Conan and I think we’ve got that. I really do.”
Morgan also previously described his version of Conan, which is initially what got me super excited for this project:
“I want the warrior whose joints have started to fuse together, who has to crack the cartilage so he can pick up a sword again. I want the guy who’s not necessarily lost a step, but there’s some rust he has to shake off. I want to embrace that. It makes it a greater hero story.
“Conan needs to be faced with challenges. The greatest challenge to him isn’t the armies that are set before him. It’s, on some level, self-doubt, a little bit of slowing down and forcing yourself to be heroic beyond what people expect of you. What I don’t want is for him to step back in and look the same. That would defeat the purpose of our story.”
Could it still happen? If Schwarzenegger’s passion is any indication, fans shouldn’t give up hope just yet. Until then, you can catch the Austrian Oak in FUBAR Season 2, now streaming on Netflix.
Would you want to see Arnold return as Conan for one last adventure? Or should the barbarian’s saga stay in the past?
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