Following the reboot which starred Jason Momoa, Warner Bros announced that Schwarzenegger would be returning in The Legend of Conan back in 2012. However, that film never materialized. Speaking to fans , Arnie explained that issues with character rights and the estate of Conans creator, Robert E. Howard, resulted in delays.
When it comes to the movie, the sad stuff about all of this is when theres an estate like this the Robert E. Howard estate when someone buys these rights, those people now own the rights and they have their own vision of what they want to do and the guy that has the rights is some young guy and hes trying to figure out how to get his way through Hollywood and this is not easy to do So there are people that say to him, why dont you start with a TV series? and then he negotiates for a TV series and that falls apart. And then he goes maybe to Netflix and that falls apart. Then he decides to make a movie maybe.
Arnie also explained how he would envision playing the character, a full three decades later.
We have been trying to convince [the rights holder] for years now that the way to go is to come back and hire a really great director and to do another Conan movie and have me play King Conan, when Conan is like 70 years old and hes disgusted by sitting on the throne and being the king and then something happens after that. Its really not that far from creating a finished script.
The idea of Conan as a senior citizen has been explored before, in parody form at least; Terry Pratchetts 1986 novel The Light Fantastic introduced readers to Cohen the Barbarian, a grizzled hero in his nineties who was a transparent but affectionate homage to Robert E. Howards original character.
Sadly, for now Arnie and co. are waiting to be given the go-ahead from the person who currently owns the rights-but hes optimistic that it could happen. The only one who really has to pull the trigger there is the people who own the Conan rights to do a movie, he said. Lets go to Netflix or whoever it is, lets hire a director whos very creative and can elevate the project to make it a winning project.