It’s been 37 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger last crushed his enemies, saw them driven before him and heard the lamentations of their women, but if the online reaction to seeing him pull the character’s sword out on social media last year was any indication, fans would still love to have him play Conan the Barbarian one more time.
After the reboot starring Jason Momoa flopped spectacularly at the box office a decade ago, there was talk that Schwarzenegger might finally get around to King Conan, but despite revealing that he’d spoken to original director John Milius about the project as recently as the summer of 2019, it’s never gained any real traction.
However, the action icon could reprise the role in an episode of Netflix’s animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots, with his Terminator: Dark Fate director Tim Miller one of the executive producers alongside David Fincher. In a new interview, the filmmaker admitted that the former Governor of California was constantly pestering him for a Conan-centric story, but he couldn’t get the necessary permission to adapt author Robert E. Howard’s Red Nails, which was the last tale the writer penned before his death in 1936.
“It would have been a Conan short. I did want to do a Conan short, but we couldn’t get permission. It would have been based on Red Nails. It involved Valeria, the pirate queen, a lost city, it was f*cked up. There were dinosaurs in it, too. We just couldn’t get permission. In the Hollywood community, people really like the show. Arnold lobbied me almost every day to get in. He’s not in it, that’s not another sneak peek.”
Not only has Love, Death & Robots been renewed for a third season that’s set to air next year, but Netflix also acquired the live-action and animated rights to Conan the Barbarian not too long ago, with an episodic series already in early development. On top of that, Schwarzenegger’s globetrotting spy series was recently given the official green light by the streamer to start moving forward at full steam, so there are a number of factors in play that make the prospect of an installment set during the Hyborian Age a distinct possibility.