Arnie’s Back In First ‘Ten’ Pic & Talk About A Conan Reboot

Arnold Schwarzenegger has tweeted a picture of himself on set for the new David Ayer film TEN. The film sees an elite team of DEA agents hunting down and executed one-by-one after they rob a drug cartel. Schwarzenegger will be playing John ‘Breacher’ Wharton. The film has flip-flopped between titles, at one point being called BREACHER, but now it’s back to TEN. A silly title if you ask me, as in this internet age it’s a lot harder to search for material on TEN than it is BREACHER. The film is loosely based on the Agatha Christie story, 10 Little Indians.

Meanwhile, there is talk about a CONAN reboot starring Arnie, which will ignore the recent CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011) and the 1984 sequel to the original CONAN THE DESTROYER. According to producer/writer Fredrik Malmberg:

The original ended with Arnold on the throne as a seasoned warrior, and this is the take of the film we will make. It’s that Nordic Viking mythic guy who has played the role of king, warrior, soldier and mercenary, and who has bedded more women than anyone, nearing the last cycle of his life. He knows he’ll be going to Valhalla, and wants to go out with a good battle.

Producer/writer at Universal, Chris Morgan, who recently wrote FAST AND THE FURIOUS SIX, is set to write the script, which he considers a dream project:

After the original seminal movie, all that came after looked silly to me. Robert E. Howard’s mythology and some great philosophy from Nietzsche to Atilla the Hun was layered in the original film. People say, he didn’t speak for the first 20 minutes of the film, but that was calculated in depicting this man who takes control of life with his own hand. This movie picks up CONAN where Arnold is now in his life, and we will be able to use the fact that he has aged in this story. I love the property of Conan so much that I wouldn’t touch it unless we came up with something worthy. We think this is a worthy successor to the original film. Think of this as Conan’s UNFORGIVEN.

There are of course worries that the film will settle for a PG-13 rating, but it sounds as though Morgan gets the violence:

I loved the choices they made in that film. You start with the wholesale slaughter and death of Conan’s village at the hand of the warlord played by James Earl Jones, and you see young Conan chained to a wheel as he becomes stronger. Then he’s a pit fighter, and later basically a stud bull before he meets the first kind person of his life, who lets him go. All of that horrific stuff happened for a reason, and then an act of kindness sends him on his journey. Will that level of violence be there? Absolutely, but only if it serves a character who lives by that barbarian law of the wild, who is capable of extreme violence and rage, but who has created his own code and operates from within it. By the end of that film, Conan became a certain character, and this film picks him up there, as he faces different challenges that include dealing with age.

But how does Conan himself feel about rejoining a franchise 30 years after his last attempt at the character? Mr. Schwarzenegger said:

I always loved the Conan character and I’m honored to be asked to step into the role once again. I can’t wait to work with Universal and the great team of Fredrik Malmberg and Chris Morgan to develop the next step of this truly epic story.

It sounds as though this film has all the right ingredients, but is CONAN a little dated these days? Do we even want to see such an iconic character in his advanced years? I think the only real title will be Conan: What’s That You Say Sonny Jim…?

TEN is released Sometime next year. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Malin Akerman, Josh Holloway, Olivia Williams, Terence Howard, Joe Maganiello, and Harrold Perrineau.

Source: Deadline