Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Fantasy Cult Franchise That Launched 44 Years Ago Is Returning With A New Movie

Arnold Schwarzenegger will ride again as one of his most memorable characters.

Released in 1982, Conan the Barbarian saw Schwarzenegger playing a warrior exacting his bloody revenge against the cult that killed his family. The film was a box office success, and it led to a critically panned 1984 sequel and a 2011 reboot starring Jason Momoa, the latter of which underwhelmed in theaters and seemingly killed the franchise.

Now, though, Schwarzenegger has revealed at Arnold Sports Festival (per TheArnoldFans) that he will be returning for a sequel to Conan the Barbarian and 1984’s Conan the Destroyer called King Conan. The project is seemingly gaining steam, with Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning) set to write and direct.

“They just hired a fantastic writer/director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies,” Schwarzenegger says. “They just hired [Christopher McQuarrie] to write and direct King Conan.”

Schwarzenegger also shares some early script details for Conan the Barbarian 3, promising that it will be leaning into the fact that he’s now in his late 70s. “Now, what they do is that they write the part,” he says. “They don’t write them like I’m forty years old, you write it to be age-appropriate. I’ll still go in there and kick some ass, but it will be different.”

As for the sequel’s story, audiences can expect to see an older Conan fighting to regain control of his kingdom. Schwarzenegger also teases that there will be plenty of blockbuster spectacle and effects on display:

“With King Conan, it’s a great old story that Conan was forty years as King, and now he gets forced out of the kingdom and there’s conflict, of course, but somehow he comes back and there’s all kinds of madness, violence, magic and creatures and stuff like that. And now, of course, there’s all kinds of special effects. The studio has plenty of money to make those movies really big, so I’m looking forward to all of those projects.”

On top of his return as Conan, Schwarzenegger teases that he’s set to be quite busy over the next few years with sequels to some of his other ’80s classics. This includes a return as Dutch in a new Predator film from Dan Trachtenberg (Predator: Badlands), as well as a sequel to 1985’s Commando:

“They did an additional Predator and the director (Dan Trachtenberg) has been doing a great job of that. Now, he wants me to be in the next Predator. We’ve talked about it. As a matter of fact, FOX studios has kind of rediscovered ‘Arnold.’ They’ve come to me and said, ‘We want you to do Predator. We just got a script for you to do Commando 2’.”

McQuarrie’s involvement as writer and director of the Conan sequel is notable. Through his work with Tom Cruise across Jack Reacher (2012) and the four most recent Mission: Impossible movies – not to mention his script work on movies like Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) – McQuarrie has established himself as one of the preeminent voices in the world of modern action cinema.

Schwarzenegger doesn’t provide a timeline for a potential King Conan production start, but, as the project is still in the script phase, filming likely wouldn’t start until next year at the earliest. This would mean a release in 2028 or beyond.

As for the other franchises, Predator has been going strong under Trachtenberg, with both Prey (2022) and Predator: Badlands earning strong reviews. Dutch hasn’t returned in the flesh since the 1987 original film, but the character did appear briefly in the animated Predator: Killer of Killers (2025).

Commando, on the other hand, has, until now, remained a one-off action flick. Exactly what’s planned for the return of John Matrix remains unclear, but with more Conan the Barbarian and more Predator on the way, Schwarzenegger evidently isn’t slowing down as an action star.

Via: Screen Rant