Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Destroyer. According to Stone, «to the Santa Monica beach to hang out.» It was a walk to the sea, but in some way into the future.
Stone and Schwarzenegger will transform Hollywood with their masculine looks in a few years. But as they walked, they linked their ambitions to a fantasy film they were making together: Conan the Barbarian. Written by Stone and starring Arnold as the shirtless warrior of the same name, it was a brutal muscle feast. Conan is filled with beheadings, sex-obsessed witches, and James Earl Jones envisioning his career as a villainous philosopher leading a cult of vicious snakes.
After going through the painstaking work on Conan's script, Stone appreciated a walk in the sun. The script, fueled by cocaine and antidepressants, was described by the film's director, Above Life, Hemingway-worshipping John Milius, as a «fever dream.» post-apocalyptic America inhabited by «mutant monsters».
«Feverish Dream» was exactly what Milius wanted. He toned down Stone's excesses by ditching the post-apocalyptic setting and mutant swarms. But he retained the gonzo energy that crackled Stone's script.
Schwarzenegger's thirst for fame was even more insatiable than Stone's. Alas, the casting directors struggled to see the young Austrian as anything other than a bicep chump where he should have brains. Even a spectacular appearance in the 1977 bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron failed to take his career to the next level. />
Stone was the first person in Hollywood to look beyond the muscles of the former Mr. Universe. Walking along the beach, he drew attention to the charisma and easy humor of Schwarzenegger. He was also struck by the readiness with which the public reached out to Schwarzenegger.
“We started out as two sunbathers and an hour later I was surprised to see 20 people already circling his towel with theirs like smaller planets around the sun,” Stone wrote in his 2020 autobiography Chasing the Light. «There should be 50 or 60 bath mates within two hours, and they are all proud to have joined the orbit around the folk hero.»
Conan the Barbarian, finally released in May 1982, became milestone for Stone and Schwarzenegger. Amid its success, Brian DePalma wrote Stone's screenplay for the gangster epic Scarface. In 1986, Stone finally made it to the top, winning several Oscars for his Vietnam Meditation Platoon, a film that is itself quite feverishly dreamy.
Conan was an even bigger triumph for Schwarzenegger. He quickly followed suit, playing the role of a killer robot in James Cameron's The Terminator. And so the action icon was born.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and director John Millius on the set of Conan the Barbarian. Photo: Alamy
Four decades later, at the age of 75, Schwarzenegger is one of the last true Hollywood movie stars. The charisma that impressed Stone is now showing on the small screen as the actor-turned-California governor plays his first major TV role in the Netflix thriller Foobar. But even as The Governor transitions to streaming, some of his legacy remains unfilled. The one that goes back to Oliver Stone and the one that goes all the way to Santa Monica Beach.
Stone and Schwarzenegger were drawn to the Conan character for similar reasons. Conan predates The Lord of the Rings, and the Stone/Arnold movie is everything Tolkien wasn't: muscular, lewd and action-packed. To this, Arnold brought a magical component of his charm. «Charisma … came from him with his smiling smile and sense of humor,» Stone recalled. «Strangers were immediately drawn to him.»
Stone saw Conan as a potentially lucrative franchise: James Bond's swords and sorcery. Every few years a new movie will come out in which Schwarzenegger runs around swinging an ax and praising the god Conan Krom (the character is based on a Celtic legend — in the books Conan goes like Conan the Cimmerian, or, as it would be today, «Conan the Welshman»).
Conan was created for the sequels in the credits.In the final scene, the barbarian, who victoriously killed his nemesis Thulsa Dum (Earl Jones), inherited the villain's kingdom — and his throne. Hail King Conan.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger and Grace Jones in Conan the Destroyer by Alamy
Or not. In 1984, a sequel was released, the one-shot semi-comedy Conan the Destroyer. A year later, Schwarzenegger played a Conan-style warrior king, Lord Kalidor, in another Robert Howard film adaptation, The Red Sonja (alongside Brigitte Nielsen, with whom he had what he called a «hot romance»).
And then the actor lowered his broadsword and never raised it again. Conan fans wondered if Schwarzenegger would continue the character's story from where it left off at the end of the first film, with the warrior king restlessly seated on the throne of Thulsa Doom.Schwarzenegger wondered too. Rumors of a new Conan movie—possible titles including King Conan and The Legend of Conan—had been circulating for years. As Schwarzenegger aged, if anything, he became more obsessed with returning as Conan.
He reminded fans of his passion for the character in 2021 when, after the January 6 riots in Washington, D.C., he took to YouTube to plead with Americans to put their political differences aside. After talking about brotherhood and forgiveness, Arnold took out the sword he wielded as Conan, saying, “Our democracy is like the steel of this sword. The stronger it hardens, the stronger it becomes.
No one would compare Arnold, even in his prime, to Laurence Olivier, but among the generation of action stars of the 1980s, he was by far the best actor. Perhaps that is why, even though contemporaries such as Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme have faded into obscurity, Schwarzenegger remains worthy of attention. He's the best thing about the completely hacky Foubar, an action comedy that only works because of Arnold's deadpan good looks.
Robert E. Howard «Conan the Wanderer» Credit: Alami
He is also smart enough to realize that King Conan could be his crowning achievement as an actor. He sees this project as his opportunity to do for fantasy what Clint Eastwood did for Western in the 1990s, when he busted the myths of the Old West with the melancholic and subversive Unforgiven. “I think you do it like in Unforgiven,” Arnold said. «You play for age.»
Hollywood has also been flirting with the return of Conan. Most recently, 10 years ago, he attempted to capitalize on the post-Game of Thrones fantasy hype to reboot the character, starring Khal Drogo himself, Jason Momoa, as the titular warrior. Unfortunately, Momoa lacked Schwarzenegger's magnetism — there's only one Conan on screen. Austrian obelisk.
However, if Schwarzenegger wants to return as Conan, he's not optimistic that the project will ever see the light of day. There are at least two King Conan scripts in circulation. One of them belongs to the director Conan Milius, who around 2002 really wanted to become a director. But he claims he was blocked by the Matrix siblings, the Wachowskis, who had nebulous plans for Howard.
“It was never greenlit. I signed a contract to write it and I wrote it. Do you know who stopped it? They were actually the Wachowskis from Warner Bros,” he said in 2014. “I was going to film it, but they were fooling around, they wanted to make 'their' film and kept giving me vague stupid notes and stuff. I don't know if they ever intended to do that.»
Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of Conan the Barbarian. Photo: Alamy
Milius believed that King Conan, as his version was called, could be Schwarzenegger's final signature at the end of his career. However, he also felt that time was running out and he could no longer bring Conan's story to a worthy conclusion. “I wouldn't run it. I don't think so. I think I have one big film left. But I do not know; maybe I'll be so young that I want to direct something else. But King Conan is an amazing thing and an excellent thing for him. But he should find a young director for this.”
Milius' comments came as a second script was already circulating — from Fast & Furious writer Chris Morgan and Universal Pictures. “We look at all the source material and we love things that are said in that tone. We have incredible respect for Howard. I'm a big fan of short stories and books, but I'm a very big fan of the first movie because it crystallized and redesigned everything for me,» Morgan said. “Milius just killed him. He did such a good job. And The Legend of Conan is really resonant, and it really digs into the legacy of the original film. I'm already very proud of it.»
Alas, cold feet among executives led to the cancellation of the new Conan — as a desperate Morgan revealed in 2017. “In the end, the studio decided they weren't going to do it. I must say, this is sincere grief, ”he said. “I love this first film so much, so much that it's one of my favorite films. We asked Will Bill [Aquaman, Justice League] to do the sketch. He killed him.»
The Morgan project was called The Legend of Conan, and it was supposed to have the harshness of Clint Eastwood, which, according to Schwarzenegger, we need from a warrior at a later age.
“Our target was Conan, 30 years later, a story similar to Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. It was so great. Ultimately, the budget was big; The studio was not sure about the name and market demand. They eventually abandoned it.»
Universal proceeded to divest the rights now owned by Fredrik Malmberg. In 2018, there were reports that Amazon was considering a Conan series under the supervision of Game of Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik. Then, in 2020, it was revealed that Malmberg had spoken to Netflix about the character. Again, nothing came of this discussion, to the desperation of the fanbase, which includes Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“The sad thing about all this is that there is such an estate, the estate of Robert E. Howard … when someone buys these rights, these people now own the rights and they have their own vision of what they want to do and the guy who has the rights is some young guy and he's trying to figure out how to get through Hollywood and that's not easy to do,” he told fansite thearnoldfans.com.
«So there are people who say to him, 'Why don't you start with a series, and then he negotiates a series and everything falls apart.' And then maybe he goes to Netflix and everything falls apart.”
Or not? Earlier this month, Malmberg appeared to contradict Schwarzenegger. He tweeted: “We spent three years with Netflix and talked to them about Arnold several times. We're currently working with a major film director who is amazing and a true Conan fan. I'll tell you more when I can, through Krom.”
Schwarzenegger is clearly upset. Along with the Terminator, Conan is the character Arnold is most associated with. He achieved everything he dreamed of when he and Oliver Stone went to sunbathe in Santa Monica 40 years ago — took over Hollywood and became the governor of California.
In the twilight of his acting life, he wants to return to where everyone is began. Let us return to Conan, the unfortunate king who conquered the world but remained unrealized. This is the story of Conan, but also possibly of Arnold.
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