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Well, it looks official: Christopher McQuarrie’s next mission is with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger, talking to website TheArnoldFans, said King Conan is eyeing a 2027 production. It’ll be written and directed by McQuarrie and pick the character up a frankly astonishing 45 years after the first movie. Here’s what Schwarzenegger had to say:

“Next year, we are going to do King Conan,” Schwarzenegger told the outlet. “So that is a reality now, and I am excited about it. For the last 10 years, I have been saying, ‘We should do King Conan, and we should get a great script written, get someone who really understands Robert E. Howard, that understands the artwork of Frank Frazetta and to continue on.’ I want to have John Milius, the director of Conan 1, to be maybe the producer. So it will be really fantastic.”

He went on to say: ‘The movie wouldn’t have worked after I did the first Conan because the whole idea of King Conan is that, for 40 years, he has been king. He is older now. He is no longer in the shape he was from his heyday, and now people are trying to take him out. He’s the king, and he gets a little bit complacent. He’s tired of the job, and he wants to move on. Look at the movie by Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven. It will be a lot like that, but it will be with extraordinary battles.”

The idea of returning to one of his most iconic roles at 78 years of ages is remarkably gutsy and it speaks to the way Schwarzenegger has successfully married his crowd pleasing, iconic early work with some really unusual and interesting choices in recent years. We’re a ways off yet, but this sounds interesting and if any character would fit the Unforgiven/Logan treatment, it’s Conan.

Both original movies and the 2011 Jason Momoa are on Blu-ray now and Conan the Barbarian and the Momoa version are streaming.