Movies
Arnold Schwarzenegger in Talks for ‘Predator’ Return, Plus ‘Commando’ and ‘Conan the Barbarian’ Sequels
Arnold Schwarzenegger may be reprising three of his iconic roles from the 1980s.
At the Arnold Sports Festival in Ohio over the weekend, TheArnoldFans reports that Schwarzenegger discusssed his long-awaited return to the Predator franchise along with Commando 2 and a new Conan the Barbarian.
“They did an additional Predator, and the director [Dan Trachtenberg] has been doing a great job of that,” Schwarzenegger said. “Now, he wants me to be in the next Predator. We’ve talked about it.”
Several previous Predator films have attempted to get Schwarzenegger to reprise his role as Dutch. The character made a brief, cryogenically frozen appearance in the extended cut of Trachtenberg’s animated anthology, Predator: Killer of Killers.
Schwarzenegger added, “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.'”
Schwarzenegger also revealed that Christopher McQuarrie is writing and directing King Conan, a third installment in the sword-and-sorcery saga.
“They just hired a fantastic writer-director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies,” Schwarzenegger noted. “They just hired [Christopher McQuarrie] to write and direct King Conan.”
He continued, “With King Conan, its a great old story that Conan was 40 years as King and now he gets forced out of the kingdom. 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.”
Despite being 78, Schwarzenegger still plans to deliver on the action. “They don’t write them like I’m 40 years old, you write it to be age-appropriate,” he explains. “I’ll still go in there and kick some ass but it will be different.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger in ‘Conan the Barbarian’
It’s been sixteen years since Freddy Krueger was last seen in the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot movie starring Jackie Earle Haley, with complicated rights issues playing a role in the franchise’s complete and total silence over the past several years. Today, that silence ends.
According to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter this afternoon, “Paramount Pictures has closed a deal for the U.S. rights to the original screenplay of A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
Paramount’s genre label Paramount Primal is behind the upcoming franchise reboot.
THR explains in further detail, “The U.S. rights are being licensed from the Craven estate, which includes Craven’s widow Iya Labunka and Craven’s son Jonathan Craven. The duo will produce the new iteration with Marc Toberoff, the attorney-turned-producer who specializes in copyright law. J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules will executive produce for Paramount Primal.”
“We look forward to bringing the world of Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street to a new and completely engaged generation of fans,” Iya Labunka said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “We know that Wes would have been thrilled to see how horror is taking its long overdue place in the cultural canon. We can’t wait for all of us to sit together in a dark theatre – around the campfire of today – as the next chapter of the Nightmare story unfolds.”
“We can’t remember a time before we were fans of Wes Craven,” said Lifshitz and Margules. “The fact that Iya and Jonathan have entrusted us with this opportunity to help usher a new story into this world is an honor beyond words. We look forward to working alongside them to bring a terrifying new nightmare to audiences everywhere, and to welcome Freddy home.”
The Elm Street franchise had of course previously had a home at New Line Cinema/Warner Bros., but the Craven Estate was able to regain the rights to the original screenplay. THR notes, “New Line retains the international rights to Nightmare on Elm Street.”
Freddy Krueger’s upcoming return is said to be “set in the world of A Nightmare on Elm Street, based on the original screenplay.” No further details are available at this time.
Will Robert Englund be returning one more time? Stay tuned for updates.
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