Arnold Schwarzenegger is still hoping for a sequel to his 1982 fantasy movie Conan the Barbarian. The actor has been looking back on his own career a lot lately, particularly as his Netflix original series FUBAR features so many references to his past work. In an interview with Collider last week promoting FUBAR Season 2, Schwarzenegger said that many of his biggest hits could still do with sequels, including Conan. It wasn’t clear if he was talking about reprising the role himself, working on it in some other capacity, or simply watching as a fan. In the latter case, the latest news on potential Conan adaptations does not look good.
“Sometimes I wish that we could do more Conan sequels, because I think that if you have the right director and the right writing, there could be a really, really good franchise to continue King Conan and stuff like that,” Schwarzenegger mused. “So I mean, there’s a lot of movies that have done that could have a sequel.”
Conan the Barbarian goes all the way back to 1931 in short stories and novels, but Schwarzenegger was the first actor to play the character on screen. He starred in the 1982 film adaptation directed by John Milius, who co-wrote the script with Oliver Stone. Schwarzenegger reprised the role in 1984 in Conan the Destroyer, and was poised to do so again in a third movie called Conan the Conqueror. That movie was delayed a few times, and was eventually re-worked into the 1997 film Kull the Conqueror.
Conan has been adapted to the screen a few times since then, and he has continued to flourish in print, comic books, and games. Jason Momoa starred in another Conan the Barbarian movie in 2011, and there were two animated series about the character as well as one live-action series in the 1990s. Starting in 2020, there were talks of a new Conan adaptation at Netflix or Prime Video, but those seem to have fizzled out.
As for the kind of belated sequel Schwarzenegger is hinting at, there were reports of him reprising his role as Conan in 2012. At the time, producers Chris Morgan and Frederick Malmberg spearheaded the effort, and screenwriter Andrea Berloff even signed on to work on the script. Schwarzenegger talked about this project enthusiastically in interviews for several years, but in 2017, Morgan said that Universal had finally canned the movie.
If Schwarzenegger is still enthusiastic about the project, there is undoubtedly a chance it could still be made one day. In the meantime, fans can catch him in FUBAR Season 2, streaming now on Netflix.
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