Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie will join to relaunch the hit Conan the Barbarian franchise. The 1982 film that put Schwarzenegger on the map was directed by John Milius. It got a sequel in 1984, Conan the Destroyer, helmed by Richard Fleischer.
McQuarrie, who directed the last four Mission: Impossible films, will write and direct the new film. The franchise is based on King Conan (1953), a collection of five fantasy short stories, written by Robert E Howard. The new film is expected to follow the events after Conan (Schwarzenegger), who was a slave, becomes a king. After gaining power, Conan gets complacent, resulting in the rearing of heads of many other competitors vying for the throne.
During the announcement of the project at the Arnold Sports Festival, the actor said, "It’s a great story where Conan was a king for 40 years. As the king, he gets complacent, and now he gets forced out of the kingdom, slowly. Then there’s conflict, of course, and then he somehow comes back, and then there’s all kinds of madness and violence and magic and creatures," he said, adding that with the present studio system and special effects, he is expecting the project to be "really big".
Not just the Conan the Barbarian franchise, Schwarzenegger is also poised to return to Predator and Commando films. He is said to be in talks with Dan Trachtenberg, who has revived the Predator franchise with Prey (2022) and Predator: Badlands (2025). The action star has reportedly received a script for Commando 2, in which he returns as Colonel John Matrix.