As he famously droned on-screen in his signature Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back.
A year after leaving the California governor鈥檚 office and becoming tabloid fodder for fathering a boy with his family鈥檚 housekeeper and splitting with his wife, Maria Shriver, the 65-year- old former bodybuilder will star in no less than three Hollywood movies over the next year.
None are likely to win Schwarzenegger an Oscar. Indeed, the movies, and Schwarzenegger鈥檚 own fee, are low-budget compared with his global blockbusters of yore. But studio executives are betting that overseas fans especially will once again respond to a personality whose 24 films generated worldwide ticket sales of $3.9 billion, according to boxoffice.com.
鈥淗e is still a worldwide star who resonates with action audiences around the world,鈥� said Rob Friedman, the co-chairman of the Lionsgate motion picture group, which is scheduled to release his next two films. The Last Stand will open on Jan. 18, and The Tomb in September.
Ten, the third film, is scheduled for release in January 2014 by Open Road Films, a joint venture of the AMC and Regal Theater chains.
鈥淲hen you have left the movie business for seven years, it鈥檚 kind of a scary thing to come back because you don鈥檛 know if you鈥檙e accepted or not,鈥� Schwarzenegger said at a Saturday press event for The Last Stand.
鈥淭here could be a whole new generation of action stars that come up in the meantime.鈥�
The actor said he was 鈥渧ery pleasantly surprised鈥� by what he called a 鈥済reat reaction鈥� to his cameo in the 2010 action film The Expendables, which featured fellow action stars Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham. The film grossed $103.1 million in U.S. ticket sales and $274.5 million worldwide.
Since then, Schwarzenegger appeared in a second Expendables and says he will join a fifth instalment of the Terminator if it is made.
Comcast鈥檚 Universal Pictures wants to 鈥渄o a bunch鈥� of new films based on the 30-year-old Conan The Barbarian movie, said Schwarzenegger, in which he would reprise his role as a barbarian.
He added that Universal, after 10 years of prodding by Schwarzenegger, also wants to do a sequel to the 1988 comedy Twins, in which he and Danny DeVito played mismatched twins, to be called Triplets.
Schwarzenegger no longer commands the $25 million paychecks he cashed in his heyday and will get between $8 and $10 million for each of his next three films, according to two people with knowledge of his salary but who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. He also gets a percentage of the profits, according to one of the people.
The new Schwarzenegger calculus banks on his films doing outsized business overseas while operating within budgets that are a fraction of the $200 million cost of his last action film, the 2003 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The budget for The Last Stand is estimated at $50 million, according to movie resource site IMDB.com.
鈥淗e has significant value outside the United States and sa国际传媒, where he is still revered by people who have grown up with him throughout the years,鈥� said Jere Hausfater, chief operating officer of film production company Aldamisa International, which hopes to do a film with Schwarzenegger in the future.
What audiences will see is an aging star who isn鈥檛 afraid of showing his drooping muscles and widening paunch, or of making fun of being past his prime. In the The Last Stand, a less than rock hard Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman who becomes the sheriff of a small border town and is then called on to stop a violent drug lord from crossing.
In Ten, he plays an aging drug agent, and in The Tomb an older prison inmate.
鈥淲e all go through the same dramas, we look at the mirror and say, what happened? You once had muscles and slowly they are deteriorating,鈥� said Schwarzenegger at The Last Stand press event.
鈥淭he great thing in the movie is that they were not trying to play me as the 35-year-old action hero but the one who is about to retire, and all of a sudden there is this challenge where he really needs to get his act together.鈥�
The one-time muscle- man compares his career metamorphosis to that of his friend Clint Eastwood, who transitioned from his Dirty Harry days to a wiser person whose not afraid to make fun of his slipping abilities in recent films like Trouble with the Curve.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 called evolution,鈥� said Sylvester Stallone, who stars with Schwarzenegger as aging inmates in The Tomb.
鈥淭here are no more woolly mammoths. Things change, but the one thing you cannot replace is charisma. Certain people have it, and will have it until the day they die.鈥�
Schwarzenegger鈥檚 infamy in fathering a son outside of his high-profile marriage to Shriver initially seemed to hurt his popular appeal. Within weeks of the disclosure, The Governator, a comic book that would feature his likeness, was cancelled.
Ultimately, though, moviegoers will be less interested in Schwarzenegger鈥檚 political adventures and personal scandals than in what he puts on the screen, says Peter Sealey, founder of The Sausalito Group and a former Columbia Pictures president of marketing and distribution.
鈥淭he movie-going audience really don鈥檛 care about things like infidelity, DUIs,鈥� added publicist Howard Bragman, vice-chairman of the firm called Reputation. 鈥淭hey overlook a lot. Ultimately, it remains, how are the movies? Is he credible? Is he going to be a joke?鈥�
