Arnold Schwarzenegger talks new CONAN movie and career choices, says he's up for a RUNNING MAN sequel!

Arnold Schwarzenegger must like big butts, because he cannot lie. When he told us he would be back all those years ago, he wasn’t kidding. The Governator’s return to the world of movies may not have been as successful (at least commercially) as he may have hoped, but those were all with new movies and not the characters that made him famous. That will all change soon though, as the first installment in the new Terminator trilogy is pretty much in the can, and now Arnie is almost ready to revive his second most famous role in the long gestating The Legend of Conan, as he explained during a recent “Evening with Arnold Schwarzenegger”(via Arnold Fans):

“It is the greatest honor to be 67 years old and to still be asked to come back into all those franchises. Whether it is the Terminator movie or it is now Conan, it is fantastic! As a matter of fact, when I get back to Los Angeles, I’ll be getting the final script [for The Legend of Conan] and then I will see it for the first time. But with Universal Pictures, I’ve tried to convince them now for 20 years to go back and continue with the Conan series and they were not as enthusiastic as I was. But then later, new management came in at Universal and they saw it entirely differently. They came to me right away and said they want to pick up the Conan series and to look at some writers and let’s get going on that. So we’ve been working on Conan and I’m really excited to be working on this – to do another Conan movie and hopefully it will be soon!”

And just in case you were wondering: yes, Arnie would totally do a sequel to Running Man:

“People loved the movie. I loved the idea, It is like the Hunger Games, it’s that kind of idea. I think that now, if someone writes it (a Running Man sequel) really well, it can be an extraordinary movie. I hope that no one decides to do that movie without me. I would really love to pick it up and continue on where we left off and be the Running Man.”

Would that sequel be called Awkwardly Shuffling Man now, seeing as Arnie is definitely no spring chicken any more? Not that the former Mr Universe is letting his more limited physical faculties hold him back though. In fact, he’s regretting not having taken on even more roles in the last few years, even if his career at the time didn’t really allow for them:

“People try to do movies without me and then they wipe out. It’s like you know with Conan, I was Governor at that time, so they couldn’t really hire me because I couldn’t really work and do movies. In an ideal world it would have been great if I really would have been a machine, I could’ve worked at night and did the movies and in the daytime ran the state of California, the eighth largest economy in the world. But that’s not reality right? The reality was that I had to kind of work for the people, I made the promise that I would represent the eight million people in California and it was the greatest job that I’ve ever had. So therefore, I couldn’t take on the challenge of doing Conan or to do Terminator, which was also done during that time.

But you know, just recently they did a remake of Total Recall without me (crowd boos, Arnold laughs). EXACTLY! You’re the reaction! I think that certain franchises can’t be done without certain actors.But at the same time, I think what’s interesting about this is, and not to change the subject, but I have been asked to do certain movies. And then I did not agree to do the movies because of some reason or the other.

Face Off for instance ended up with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta, it was a highly successful movie and I was sitting at home and I said “DAMMIT, WHY DIDN’T I DO THE MOVIE!”. So there were situations like that, I remember the Count of Monte Cristo, I just couldn’t figure out how I could change my accent and my body to look different in the end. So I said you know, I’m not going to do the movie. And it was a very successful movie. And The Rock, with Nicholas Cage and with Sean Connery, they came to me and the Producer came to me with kind of like eighty pages. Scripts are usually about a hundred and twenty pages, so they came with eighty pages and a lot of hand written scribbling on it and he was like shaking and he was kind of like weird acting. And I said to myself, you know something, why don’t you come back with the finished script and then we’ll talk about it. Well the son of a gun went out and got Nicholas Cage to make the movie, a highly successful movie, so I was pissed off about that too! So it had been the other way around too.

So there were a lot of movies that I turned down that actually turned out to be very successful but with the other actors and I have to say that the other actors did an extraordinary job in those movies.”

As big a fan as I am of Arnold’s I am really, really glad he passed on all three those movies. I simply cannot even imagine with an Arnold Schwarzenegger Count of Monte Cristo movie would even look or sound like. Oh wait, I can imagine it. Bad, it would probably look and sound really bad.

Despite all the warning klaxons going off with just about every image or piece of info we’ve received about Teminator: Genisys, I really hope that it turns out to be way better than what I’m expecting and just blows us all away. I need to live in a world where Arnie is a kickass Terminator again. It’s the only way.

Last Updated: November 18, 2014