In his return to acting from politics, we’ve seen Arnold Schwarzenegger embrace quite a few of his older roles. While there has long been a rumor that he might be returning as an elderly Conan, the actor now appears to be sharing that a ‘The Legend of Conan‘ movie won’t be happening and why it fell apart. With the rise of quality fantasy being embraced by audiences when it is done right, this is news I’m not eager to share as we haven’t seen the idea of a returning elder warrior in a fantasy setting be embraced by the big screen yet.
The problem holding this movie up isn’t a matter of lack of interest by the actor or by Warner Bros. who had announced that the film was coming back in 2012. What has held back this trilogy from being completed boils down to a rights issue.
According to Schwarzenegger:
“When it comes to the movie, the sad stuff about all of this is when there’s an estate like this…The Robert E. Howard estate…when someone buys these rights, those people now own the rights, and they have their own vision of what they want to do, and the guy that has the rights is some young guy, and he’s trying to figure out how to get his way through Hollywood, and this is not easy to do…So there are people that say to him, ‘Why don’t you start with a TV series?’ and then he negotiates for a TV series, and that falls apart. And then he goes maybe to Netflix, and that falls apart. Then he decides to make a movie maybe.”
This sounds as if he might be referring to the Amazon Series we had heard about last year. While this isn’t the news anyone has wanted to hear, we did learn that the actor not only would still be open to embracing the role but even shared a few ideas as to how they wanted to make the film!
“We have been trying to convince [the rights holder] for years now that the way to go is to come back and hire a really great director and to do another Conan movie and have me play King Conan, when Conan is like 70 years old, and he’s disgusted by sitting on the throne and being the king and then something happens after that. It’s really not that far from creating a finished script. The only one who really has to pull the trigger there is the people who own the Conan rights to do a movie. Let’s go to Netflix or whoever it is, let’s hire a director who’s very creative and can elevate the project to make it a winning project.”
As much as I like the idea of this movie happening, a final story of Conan being stretched to a Netflix series where we see the aged warrior back for one last adventure is thrilling. With Netflix already picking up ‘The Witcher‘ and streaming studios embracing fantasy left and right after the success of ‘Game of Thrones,’ this feels like it would be a fantastic addition to the service.
Now, if only we can see it happen.
Are you annoyed as to why ‘The Legend of Conan’ isn’t currently happening? Would you check out a film or tune into a streaming service to see one last adventure of this King who is “disgusted by sitting on the throne”? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Slash Film