Unproduced Legend Of Conan Movie Was Inspired By Unforgiven

Screenwriter and film producer Chris Morgan — known for penning most of the Fast & Furious franchise and overseeing Universal’s classic monsters shared-universe — was set to produce The Legend of Conan. It would’ve starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, taken place 30 years after the events in 1982’s Conan The Barbarian, and leaving out anything from Richard Fleischer’s 1984 sequel, Conan The Destroyer.

While promoting Fate of the Furious, Morgan explained why Universal decided not to green-lit The Legend of Conan, which was written by Gangster Squad-scribe, Will Beall. “Ultimately, the budget was big, the studio was not really sure of the title, and the relevance in the marketplace,” Morgan told EW. “They ended up letting it go. I think they’re gonna look to do a TV show or something with it.”

Their take on an aged-Conan would’ve been similar to Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Western Unforgiven. “Conan will always have life in it, not for us unfortunately,” Morgan shared with Collider. “We put together a great, great story –I’m the biggest fan of the [John] Milius Conan film, a lot of people make fun of it but I think it’s the smartest script, I think it’s a great performance, I love the story. It actually has something to say about what it is to be a man and a warrior, what’s worth fighting for and what’s not, I’ve always loved it. To me there’s only been one Conan movie and it’s that one, there’s never been anything else. So our idea was to literally pick that movie up but 30 years later and kind of do a version of Unforgiven, where there’s something going on and Conan is not the strongest guy he used to be, he’s not the legend he used to be; he’s an old, broken guy. And this thing comes down to where now he’s got to find a reason to go on and find a different way to fight other than just with brute strength. It was a great movie that just gave validation to even at the end of someone’s life there’s real value to them. I don’t know, it was so great, Arnold [Schwarzenegger] loved it. I think at the end of the day it was just probably too expensive, too big, and to the studio ultimately it wasn’t in the cards for them. So now it’s kind of out and I think they’re looking elsewhere to do like maybe a TV show or something else with it. But that was my interest, just to tell that one story, but you never know, down the road we’ll see what happens.”

Interestingly enough, Schwarzenegger said recently that a dispute over the rights to the character are causing a roadblock. Is he still interested in doing a third Conan movie?

“Yes,” he affirmed to Yahoo. “But those things are always complicated, because all of a sudden the rights are being sold to the ‘Conan’ name, and the Robert E. Howard books. And then the question becomes, what is public domain, and what is not? So there’s all this debate. Two screenplays have been written, which means there are scripts that are available that are really good; they just have to be fine-tuned. As soon as they sort all that out, I think they can go and shoot a movie. But I would love to do another one, yes.”