Well here it is!! Arnold has issued a statement to start KING CONAN!!!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Btv_DxaHzj4/It will be epic.
And all you Getbigger's should know that my best buddy Roy Thomas was the guy who brought CONAN to Marvel comics back in 1971 and started the whole Sword and Sorcery movement of the 70's and 80's. He also wrote CONAN The DESTROYER (and the animated feature FIRE AND ICE and co-created Red Sonja). Now that Marvel has gotten back the rights to CONAN last year, they are re releasing all his Conan comics for a whole new generation.
The Red Sonja movie is currently in the works of being produced (although they have stopped production due to Bryan Singers rape accusations). Can't wait for that.
Anyway, here's Roy Thomas' story with Arnold he wrote just for you.
CROM!!!
It's great to see Arnold and Conan reunited, since I felt that (except for Grace Jones in the second one), he was the main thing that was good about either of the movies. Well, James Earl Jones had made a good Thulsa Doom, too.
I remember the day I met Arnold, some time before the first movie began filming. I was invited to go see a test scene being shot because it was being done only a few blocks from the house my wife Dann and I rented in Hollywood. (I knew it was being done because, the day before, while Dann and I were in a major costume shop looking for swords, etc., to wear to a party as Conan and Red Sonja, someone from the studio was there shopping for props for the very same shoot that would be the next day!) Anyway, I got a chance, with mostly just technicians there, to watch Arnold and Milius' surfer buddy (who would appear in the film) sitting around a campfire eating some kind of meat on a bone, while discussing the gods, Crom, etc.--basically dialogue that would appear in the movie later. But it was hard not to chuckle because there, just a couple of feet from Arnold's beefy leg, and thus just out of camera range, was the source of the food they were eating: a Kentucky Fried Chicken basket. Arnold and I said hello to each other, and he was very gracious.
2-3 years later, after the filming of the movie "Conan the Destroyer" was basically over (and before producer Dino DeLaurentiis tried to deny my then-partner Gerry Conway and me screen credit on it after it was rewritten, which happily the Writers Guild of America West stopped him from doing), Dino held a nighttime party at his then-famed "Beverly Hills fast-food place." Arnold saw us over there, must've recognized me from our one meeting, and came over and started talking to us as we were all eating something-or-other. It was just idle chitchat, but as he walked away, he said with his thick Austrian accent: "I always liked your screenplay the best." That's when I knew he'd make a good politician... that, and the fact that he'd remember me from that brief encounter 2-3 years earlier. He had charisma, and I'm sure he still has it. I'm only sorry there apparently isn't going to be a third Schwarzenegger Conan movie, even if I've long since given up on Hollywood (including the part Gerry and I played in it) catching the spirit of Robert E. Howard's wondrous hero on film.
Best,
Roy Thomas
