Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film career has spanned over a half-century. Starting with his inauspicious debut in 1970’s Hercules in New York—in which his voice is dubbed and he’s credited as Arnold Strong—the bodybuilding icon has starred in 28 movies and appeared in nearly 20 more. But we want to focus on the ones that didn’t get made but could’ve been amazing. These are the big what ifs. Would Berserker have been as monstrously gonzo as its concept? Would Hans and Franz have been as ludicrously funny as its script? What if Paul Verhoeven had been given the 100 mil to make Crusade? With a bigger budget and better technology, could John Milius have pulled off the best Conan two decades after he made the first? What if? We look at the five most promising unmade Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and a final one we’re not so sure about.
BERSERKER
1985’s gory-funny Re-Animator was an instant cult hit. In it, Peter Kent, Arnold’s stunt double in 1984’s The Terminator, played a reanimated corpse. And that’s why Arnold saw an advance screening of Re-Animator. He loved it and wanted to work with its director, Stuart Gordon. So, in 1985, Gordon and Dennis Paoli wrote a treatment for another outrageous horror movie called Berserker. It focuses on The Berserker, a pro wrestler heel. Seeing that the wrestler Black Mamba has grown huge fast, The Berserker takes the same drug. Black Mamba kills a wrester in the ring and is turning into a reptilian monster-man. But when he stops taking the drug he dies, “his body crumbling like an empty bag.” The Berserker finds the scientist behind the drug (which, among other things, can heal mortal wounds), and is faced with a quandary: Stop taking the drug and die like Black Mamba or keep taking it and become a murderous monster. Thankfully, he chooses the latter.
This pro wrestling horror flick, with excellent, gory effects and an assortment of bizarre wrestling characters, would’ve landed at the ’80s WWE peak with Arnold still in his 30s and able to get more jacked than Hulk Hogan. The concept art seen below is from when The Berserker tears the arm off a wrestler. The Berserker even has a wrestler girlfriend, who is just a regular steroid user (she shaves her face in a funny bit). Near the end, the rampaging, Hulk-like Berserker attacks and defeats a raging semitruck and its inhabitants. When he can’t get the last vial of the drug from his girlfriend, The Berserker’s death mirrors Black Mamba’s: “The magnificent muscles shrink, seeming to deflate.…He falls to the floor, a limp sack of powdery flesh.”
The late Stuart Gordon said: “We sent it to Arnold and his manager, who sent back a message that said: ‘Arnold doesn’t want to play a monster. He only wants to play heroes.’ What I tried to get across was this guy is a hero, someone the audience really sympathizes for, with that being part of this terrible situation. The idea was to let Arnold really show some new sides of his acting ability. To have Arnold Schwarzenegger be in jeopardy for a change, to have him betrayed by his own body would’ve been really interesting. I think the problem with a lot of his movies is that you’re never worried about him. You’re always just waiting for him to tear the other person into pieces.”
The concept of faked wrestling violence and characters becoming horrifying real is excellent. And the time seemed right for all the elements—except one. It was a couple years too late for Arnold to go this dark. On his way to superstardom after the mega-success of another violent movie, The Terminator, he was suddenly more careful about his image and career. Even the T-800 would be a hero in sequels. Berserker was never made. However, Arnold did repay Gordon for his efforts. The seven-time Mr. O was later attached to star in the sci-fi flick Fortress but bowed out. As the movie was being reimagined with a much lower budget, Arnold suggested Stuart Gordon as director, and Gordon got the gig.
CONAN 3
Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in 1982’s Conan the Barbarian and its 1984 sequel Conan the Destroyer. A third movie in a trilogy, titled Conan the Conqueror was hinted at in the final moments of Destroyer as we see a bearded King Conan with ending narration “…until at last he found his own kingdom and wore his crown upon a troubled brow” and then the text: “…BUT THAT IS ANOTHER STORY.” Another story was never told. Conqueror, planned for 1987, was never made. Only four months after Destroyer hit theaters, Arnold became an overnight film sensation with The Terminator. Why return to Cimmeria? By the early ’90s, he was the number one action superstar in the world, and his contract with Conan’s producer expired.
In 2001, John Milius (director and cowriter of the first Conan) finished a script for King Conan, Crown of Iron. The cinematic careers of Arnold and, especially, Milius were floundering then, and this was designed to get them both on track with another bloody, action opus, this one focused on the aging barbarian and his son (The Rock was attached). Arnold ran for California’s governorship with this movie as his backup plan. When he won, King Conan went on the shelf.
Cut to October 2012. Universal Pictures announced plans for Arnold to star in The Legend of Conan, a sequel to the first, brutal Conan, bypassing the more comic book-ish Destroyer and the 2011 Jason Momoa remake. It focuses on old Conan, living his final days in exile, returning to save his people. For the rest of the decade, it was rumored to be in development, sometimes with the title Conan the King, but…nothing.
In 2023, Arnold said: “It’s been pending for the last 10 years. [Fredrik] Malmberg owns the rights. He comes to me and says, ‘Oh, I have a deal with Netflix,’ and when we ask Netflix, they don’t know anything about it. It’s one of those crazy things. I hope he figures it out. I think you do it like Unforgiven, where you play the age. There’s a great script out there that John Milius wrote, and others have written one. The story is there. There are directors who want to do it. But he has the rights, and until he sells the rights for one or two movies, or for the franchise, there’s nothing you can do about it.” Not even Crom has been able to produce ANOTHER STORY.
CRUSADE
This is the Schwarzenegger movie that came closest to happening only to have the rug pulled. They had a script by an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, massive budget, prestigious cast, locations in Spain and Morocco, crew, sets, storyboards, props, press materials, and then—poof. What happened to what is regarded as one of the best unproduced projects of all time? In 1993, preproduction was proceeding on pace for 1994’s Crusade, starring Arnold and directed by Paul Verhoeven, who had helmed Arnold in the 1990 blockbuster Total Recall and was riding high on the even bigger hit, 1992’s Basic Instinct. It was written by Walon Green, who penned The Wild Bunch and other classics.
In 1095 AD, peasant Hagen (Arnold) is caught stealing from a pedophile priest but is saved from the gallows by the Pope after he fakes a miracle and agrees to fight with Catholics to free Jeruselom from Muslims. Sold to Muslim slavers by his evil half-brother, Hagen becomes a bodyguard for a Muslim prince. He’ll switch sides again, but the story takes no side. Along the way, Hagen falls in love with the prince’s daughter, there are swashbuckling seafaring scenes, a near castration, a bonkers scene wherein Arnold is stiched into a live donkey, reflections in the Holy City on a higher power, and what could’ve been the most grisly battle sequence ever put on film as Hagen fights through phalanxes of warriors with sword and scythe.
Crusade was sold as part Spartacus, part Conan. Hagen, no mere barbarian or terminator, could’ve been Arnold’s best character. Most promising was the reuniting of Verhoeven (known for his bloody excess) and a still-buff Arnold, both at their cinematic career peaks. The cast included Oscar-winner Robert Duvall, future Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly, and future Emmy-winner John Turturro.
The problem was the cost. Crusade was planned to be the first $100 million-budgeted movie. At the final meeting with the studio, Verhoeven was asked how he’d keep the price tag to $100 million. He grew angry and said there were no guarantees. Arnold remembered: “I kept kicking him under the table and trying to tell him to shut up while we’re ahead. But he just wouldn’t, and that was it. That was the end of that movie. Paul always tried to be honest, but you can be a little bit selective about when to be honest and when to just move on with the project. It was a shame.” The first $100-million movie did come in 1994: True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Though there was another attempt to revive it a few years later, Crusade was never made. Its Spartacus/Conan blueprint was used by 2000’s Gladiator, which even features a former pro bodybuilder (Ralf Moeller) named Hagen.
HANS AND FRANZ
Beginning in the late ’80s on Saturday Night Live, Hans (Dana Carvey) and Franz (Kevin Nealon) were Austrian bodybuilders who denigrated others as “girlymen” for not being as jacked as they appeared to be under their gray sweats. Their “Pumping Up with Hans and Franz” set was decorated with cut-outs of Arnold, their cousin, and Arnold appeared as himself in two episodes. In the early ’90s, the property was optioned to become a movie with Arnold co-producing and co-starring with Carvey and Nealon. Carvey, Nealon, and SNL writers Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel penned the script. Working titles: Hans and Franz Go to Hollywood or Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Delimma. In 2023 on the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, the four writers did a read-through (Smigel voiced Arnold), enacting scenes from the script.
The story kicks in when the TV network cancels Pumping Up with Hans and Franz after the hosts describe Martin Luther King, Jr. as “flabby.” They journey to Hollywood to meet with their cousin, Arnold, whose house is sort of a bodybuilding Disney Land. It’s decorated with furniture and huge sculptures shaped like muscles and features a staircase made of connected StairMasters, a mile-long lap pool (with a yacht), and an underground lair where scientists plot Arnold’s career and create new exercises for him. A machine instantly removes body hair for competitions, as a “hairy Italian bodybuilder” named Franco (Franco Columbu?) demonstrates. And on and on. The screenplay is just an excuse for such silliness, including Arnold curling the casket at his grandfather’s funeral, super-steroid crackers, self-mocking celebrity cameos—including fitness icon Jack LaLanne (who is made of liquid metal, T2-style) as the villainous Mr. X—and the planet Earth awkwardly giving Arnold a bottle of wine for saving it.
It became as much an Arnold movie as a Hans and Franz movie, parodying him and bodybuilding at every turn; and, after the underperformance of 1993’s Last Action Hero, loaded with Arnold self-parodying, Arnold bowed out. This was also a post-Wayne’s World (1992) time, when a rush of SNL-based flicks like Coneheads (1993), It’s Pat (1994), and Stuart Saves His Family (1995) bombed. Hans and Franz never made it beyond the script stage. When Arnold appeared on Conan’s podcast, he spoke glowingly about listening to the read-through: “It was so funny. There’s no comedy movie, to be honest with you, that I have laughed that much [at] than just listening to you. It was fantastic. It was so well written and I hope they do it. I really hope they do it. You still can do it.” That seems very unlikely, but the “fantastic” scene-reading is available as a podcast and on YouTube.
I AM LEGEND
Adapted from a Richard Matheson novel, this post-apocalyptic thriller came out in 2007, starring Will Smith. It was previously made in 1964 as The Last Man on Earth and 1971 as The Omega Man. In 1997, it was almost a big-budget film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Arnold as the apparent lone human survivor of a man-made plague who is forced to battle vampiric mutants. Scott was the visionary director of the sci-fi classics Alien and Blade Runner and had received an Oscar nomination for helming Thelma and Louise, but his most recent three movies had underperformed. So, the studio grew leery about a dystopian film with no dialogue in its first hour and a $108-million budget. They wanted more action and less expenses. Scott rewrote the script, adding action while still trimming the budget by $20 million. It wasn’t enough. His I Am Legend was shelved by the studio in March 1998. With a rewritten script, new director, and new star, it was a blockbuster nine years later. Ridley Scott’s next movie was 2000’s Gladiator, the second highest grossing film and best picture Oscar winner of that year.
TRIPLETS
With the unlikely pairing of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, the comedy Twins was a box office success in 1988. It seemed like a one-off. How many more big-guy, little-guy jokes could you do? In 2012, a twist: Triplets with Eddie Murphy joining Schwarzenegger and DeVito as their long-lost triplet. Frankly, we’re not huge fans of Arnold’s comedies, and this didn’t sound particularly promising. (For one thing, Murphy is a generation younger than Schwarzenegger and DeVito. Samuel L. Jackson, to name one Black actor, would be age appropriate.) It bounced around development hell for the rest of the decade. In 2021, it was finally announced that filming would commence on Triplets in 2022 in Boston with Tracey Morgan (seven years younger than Murphy) playing the third triplet and Twins director Ivan Reitman returning to direct. Reitman died that February. Arnold later said “Jason Reitman f**ked it up! [Producer/director] Jason Reitman literally stopped the project when his father died. His father wanted to do it really badly. I wanted to do it really badly. Danny DeVito wanted to do it really badly. We had the financing. When his father passed away, Jason says, ‘I never liked the idea’ and put a hold on it.”
