King Conan will reclaim his throne next year

Director Christopher McQuarrie's long-awaited Conan The Barbarian sequel begins shooting next year. 

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  May 19, 2026 | 7:13pm
Screenshot: YouTube
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King Conan will reclaim his throne next year

Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger is through rebooting The Terminator (for now), he’s turned his attention to a character that predates it: Conan the Barbarian. Announced earlier this year, King Conan will bring old-man Arnold back to the past, and it’s coming in our near future. Speaking to the long-running Schwarzenegger fan site The ArnoldFans, the bodybuilder-turned-real-estate-tycoon-turned-actor-turned-governor-turned-actor says, “Next year, we are going to do King Conan.” For him, it was a decade-long journey to find “someone who really understands [Conan author] Robert E. Howard that understands the artwork of Frank Frazetta and to continue on.” Schwarzenegger also wants to bring back Barbarian director John Milius as a producer. It was also a question of waiting 40 years for him to age into the role, comparing King Conan to Unforgiven. “It will be a lot like that, but it will be with extraordinary battles.” He continues:

“The movie wouldn’t have worked after I did the first Conan because the whole idea of King Conan is that, for 40 years, he has been king. He is older now. He is no longer in the shape he was from his heyday, and now people are trying to take him out. He’s the king, and he gets a little bit complacent. He’s tired of the job, and he wants to move on.”

Earlier today, The Playlist confirmed that McQuarrie would, indeed, helm the picture. But Conan isn’t the only thing on McQuarrie’s plate. Last month, he was announced as writer, director, and producer for an upcoming Battlefield movie, based on the video game, starring Michael B. Jordan. He’s also still on the hook for a musical and Les Grossman spin-off movie, assuming he and Tom Cruise are still talking after whatever the hell happened with Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning.

King Conan would be the fourth Schwarzenegger Conan movie—lest we forget 1985’s Red Sonja, which the star called “the worst movie he ever made.” (We guess he technically make Terminator Salvation). His final time turn was 1987’s Conan The Destroyer. In 2011, a Marcus Nispel-directed reboot, starring Jason Momoa, bombed, as did the barely released 2025 Conan spin-off, Red Sonja. But when has a few bombs ever stopped anyone from trying again?

 
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