When Arnold Schwarzenegger made an uncredited cameo during the opening scene of 2003’s The Rundown, it was clearly designed as a passing of the torch moment, with the elder statesman of action cinema giving his very public blessing to Dwayne Johnson to step into his shoes as the genre’s next major star.
It would be an understatement to say that The Rock has lived up to those expectations since then, and he’s now arguably the most popular talent in the entire business, but even if you don’t agree with that sentiment, then you can’t deny that he’s definitely the highest-paid. He might also mimic Arnie’s run into politics one day if all of the presidential posturing leads to something bigger in the future, but for now, he’s still focused on his acting career.
It seems that the parallels between the Terminator star and The Rock may run deeper though quite soon, as insider Daniel Richtman is claiming that Johnson wants to revive a classic Schwarzenegger franchise to star in himself, but the tipster doesn’t offer much depth or detail on what’s an incredibly vague statement, other than it might be Total Recall. Of course, Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi movie was remade less than a decade ago with Colin Farrell in the lead role and it sucked, so that’s probably not a great idea.
As for what it could possibly be? Well, we’ve got no clue, especially when Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t starred in a whole lot of sequels. In fact, outside of The Terminator and The Expendables, the only time he’s ever played the same character more than once came in 1984’s Conan the Destroyer. Even the word ‘classic’ is open to interpretation, when you could realistically name Commando, Red Heat, The Running Man, Predator, Kindergarten Cop, True Lies and Eraser as the best of the rest, and almost all of those titles have either reboots, remakes or episodic adaptations in the works already.
