Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger is acting again at full strength, the rumor mills have been working overtime to discuss the potential projects he may be entertaining. At the top of the list are returns to two of the franchises he is synonymous with: CONAN and THE TERMINATOR.
In terms of CONAN, after the disastrous reboot from a couple years ago the only way that fans would pack theaters would be if Arnold himself returned to the series. The man is much older but that could come into play in the story, especially if they spin the oft-discussed KING CONAN to use Schwarzenegger’s age as a plot device to, for lack of a better phrase, come out of retirement to crack some skulls again.
During his book tour in France, Schwarzenegger was directly asked about CONAN and had this to say (translated from French, so excuse the grammatical errors): “I made contacts in that respect, because it is a project that is particularly dear to me. I must first shoot Ten by David Ayer, but then we’re going to focus on it. Remains to be seen who would direct and if it is John Milius script which would be adapted.”
If handled correctly, I would be interested in seeing KING CONAN. They could always pair him up with an actor to play his son to take some of the action off of his hands and still keep him in the picture.
As for THE TERMINATOR, we had such high hopes for a while. Megan Ellison purchased the rights to the franchise at auction and FAST FIVE director Jeremy Lin was attached. Seeing as he is off making FAST SIX, I doubt TERMINATOR 5 will happen soon, but it appears that Arnold and Lin had already had talks about the direction the next movie should take.
Den of Geek cites sources as saying Lin and Arnold were developing an idea for the story that would’ve centred on an alternate timeline in which Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese lived. Interesting. I remember that the McG/Christian Bale movies were rumored to involve time traveling to a contemporary period so they could film the war with the machines. But, using an alternate timeline would definitely give the franchise a reboot that could open up a ton of possibilities. It would not, however, explain why the T-800 has aged.
Between these two, I think I would rather see a new TERMINATOR movie done correctly. Lin and Arnold are correct in waiting to make sure that they get a good screenplay because both RISE OF THE MACHINES and SALVATION were lacking compared to the James Cameron movies. Here is hoping we get to see both of these projects at some point.
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