We know he’s back in the biz, and we’re told he’s circling and/or attached to a number of projects, but it’s anyones guess what Arnold Schwarzenegger’s next film will actually be. It could be “Terminator 5″, which, as reported earlier this week, Schwarzenegger has agreed to do for director Justin Lin, it might be the ‘Walking Tall’-esque actioner “The Last Stand”, or there’s a chance “The Tomb”, about a prison designer who is forced to break out of his own creation, could go first. Now, according to Vulture , there’s a ‘serious’ drama that Schwarzenegger’s also considering, and word is it might be the first movie back for the ex-Governor of California.
“Cry Macho”, said to be something Schwarzenegger has circled for years and would be directed – as possibly as early as this Summer – by “Lincoln Lawyer” director Brad Furman.
The movie is based on the 1975 novel by the late N. Richard Nash (a playwright famous for The Rainmaker, he also wrote the Cry Macho screenplay before he died in 2000). This won’t be a throwback to Arnold’s heyday of silly action flicks: Schwarzenegger is said to want to utilize some acting muscles for his return to the big screen. He will play a damaged-goods horse trainer who’s just been ignominiously put out to pasture by his feckless boss. In exchange for some retirement money, the broken — and broke — horseman agrees to kidnap the boss’s 11-year-old son from his rich Mexican ex-wife. Things take an unexpected turn, however, when the ex-wife is all too glad to be rid of her juvenile delinquent.
Ruddy had actually had Schwarzenegger attached to the script almost a decade ago, but politics interrupted that plan. It sat on a shelf for a while, at one point drawing in Clint Eastwood as the horseman, but that, too, faltered. Now Vulture hears that Ruddy is partnering with Bill Block, the District 9 producer and financier, and they will head to Cannes to seek financing.
I think it’s unlikely that “Terminator 5″ is going to go next, namely because there’s no script or studio, but should this be the movie Schwarzenegger makes his comeback in? If he was De Niro or Mickey Rourke or Robert Redford, maybe, but Schwarzenegger? Personally, I think he needs to do his big-time action blockbuster before anything else… then later, when he can hardly get his legs moving in the morning without the aid of an ice-dipped whip, he can do the non-actiony stuff. Wouldn’t you agree?
