Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Alasdair Stuart is not doing the obvious joke…

He’s not.

ANYWAY, Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to the start of his career it seems. Not quite the start (no Pumping Iron or Hercules in New York II. Yet.) but the first role that really made his name: Conan.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Schwarzenegger is working with Christopher McQuarrie, well liked in these parts for at least three of the last Mission: Impossible movies, on a return to Conan. The original, in 1982, is beloved. The sequel, in 1984, is also a movie. This project, titled King Conan, would pick up 40 years after Conan becomes King and, well, let’s hear what the man himself had to say at the Arnold Sports Festival earlier this week:

“It’s a great story where Conan was 40 years king [as] king and 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. Now, of course, you have all the special effects, and the studio system has plenty of money to make those movies really big. So I’m looking forward to all of those projects.”

Honestly, Old Conan, the full ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown’ affair sounds great. But he’s not just coming back to those. Schwarzenegger also confirmed he’s got a script for Commando 2, which would see him return to the role of Colonel John Matrix an astonishing three decades and change after his first appearance. That one? That feels like Schwarzenegger’s Logan, or what John Rambo tried and largely failed to do.

But the one that’s really exciting is confirmation that Schwarzenegger has been talking to Dan Trachtenberg about Predator. Trachtenberg is the mastermind behind Prey, Killer of Killers and Badlands, the three new Predator movies that have completely renovated the franchise. Schwarzenegger starred in the original 1987 movie as Alan ‘Dutch’ Schafer, the leader of an off-the-books commando unit hunted by an alien warrior in the middle of a deniable operation. The character has haunted the franchise ever since. An early version of The Predator finished with Dutch making an appearance, but Schwarzenegger turned it down. More recently, Trachtenberg dropped Dutch, Detective Mike Harrigan from Predator 2 and Naru from Prey into a post-credits scene for the animated Killer of Killers, confirming all three have been kept on ice by the Yautja. Now, it looks like Dutch will at last be back.

So Close!

Anyway, early days on all three of these but promising signs for sure. Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, the entire Predator franchise and Commando are all available to stream and on disc now.