Christopher McQuarrie's next mission is a Conan legacy sequel with Arnold Schwarzenegger 

Announcing a slew of revivals, reboots, and sequels, Arnold Schwarzenegger had better start reloading those biceps because King Conan has a director.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  March 9, 2026 | 9:19pm
Screenshot: YouTube
Film News Arnold Schwarzenegger
Christopher McQuarrie's next mission is a Conan legacy sequel with Arnold Schwarzenegger 

Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie’s next mission, should he choose to accept it, is King Conan. After years of throwing Tom Cruise out of airplanes and attempting to bury him at sea, McQuarrie will write and direct King Conan, a legacy sequel to the original Schwarzenegger movies from the early ’80s. This is per Arnold Schwarzenegger, the next over-60 movie star to put his life in McQuarrie’s hands. Appearing at the Arnold Sports Expo 2026 in Columbus, Ohio, over the weekend, Schwarzenegger confirmed not only the new Conan but also talks regarding a new Predator from Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg and a new Commando, while also taking a shot at the “failed” Total Recall remake. “Fox Studio has kind of rediscovered Arnold,” he said. “So now they come to me and say, ‘We want you to do Predator. We just got a script for you for Commando number two.’ Then, they just hired a writer and director who did Tom Cruise’s last four movies, a fantastic writer-director. They just hired him to write and direct King Conan.” 

Those last four Tom Cruise movies account for two-thirds of McQuarrie’s filmography. In addition to producing Top Gun: Maverick, McQuarrie has been Cruise’s go-to director since 2015, helming Missions: Impossible Rogue Nation, Fallout, Dead Reckoning Part One, and Final Reckoning. The series seemingly came to a close in 2025’s Final Reckoning, but considering we’re talking about a four-decades-late Conan movie led by a 78-year-old Schwarzenegger, we wouldn’t bet against the return of Ethan Hunt. 

King Conan has a long history within the Conan mythos. The fourth collection of short stories by creator Robert E. Howard, King Conan, became a Marvel Comics title that ran throughout the ’80s and a Dark Horse Comics book that adapted many of the stories from Howard’s collection. 

“It’s a great story where Conan was 40 years king [as] king and he gets complacent, and now he gets forced out of the kingdom, slowly,” the once and future Barbarian said. “Then there’s conflict, of course, and then he somehow comes back, and then there’s all kinds of madness and violence and magic and creatures. Now, of course, you have all the special effects, and the studio system has plenty of money to make those movies really big. So I’m looking forward to all of those projects.”

Following 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, Schwarzenegger has been mostly absent from the big screen. Though he had a cameo in the new Running Man, he’s predominantly kept busy through State Farm commercials and his Netflix series, Fubar, which was canceled after two seasons in August 2025.

 
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