Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career has never been defined by being subtle, and so now that the action hero actor has written a book, he’s going all out to promote it. The book, Be Useful: Seven Tools For Life, in which Arnold discusses how he has achieved his own success. It features stories from his own life, including discussing his split from Maria Shriver. It isn’t set to come out for a few more weeks, but Arnold has received his first copies and he went full Conan to show them off.
In a new video on Instagram Arnold opens a box of his new book by swinging what appears to be an actual Conan the Barbarian sword to open the box, which is a bit overkill. But again, Arnold has never been subtle. Check it out.
I love how the video has the perfect edit and makes the fact that we jump from the sword swing to the open box almost imperceptible. I’m pretty sure if Arnold actually swung that sword into the box at full strength, as he seems to do, he would likely either destroy the book. Or, depending on just how real that sword is, he might destroy the weapon itself.
Also, seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger open a box of books with a sword opens up lots of Conan the Librarian jokes that most people in the video comments seem to be overlooking.
It’s great that Arnold Schwarzenegger has written a book, he must be proud, but all I’m thinking about when seeing Arnold with that sword is where is the King Conan movie we’ve been waiting literally decades to see. 1984’s Conan the Destroyer gave us a sequel tease that revealed the ultimate fate of the character and promised to tell us that story, but nearly 40 years later we’ve never seen it.
That’s not to say there haven’t been attempts. King Conan, or Legend of Conan has surfaced and then the Conan sequel plans died just as quickly. As recently as 2019 Arnold expressed interest in returning to the role, but it seems that procuring the rights to Conan from the Robert E. Howard estate was proving difficult.
It’s unclear if there are any active attempts to do anything with Arnold’s Conan or if that idea is considered a lost cause at this point. Considering how many sequels we’ve seen from decades-old franchises in the last few years it’s all the more surprising that a new Conan sequel has never surfaced.
There was an attempt to reboot Conan with Jason Momoa over a decade ago that did not work out, and there’s been talk of a new Conan TV series, which may make a new movie less likely, but considering how open studios have been, and the success that has come, from some of these legacy sequels, Conan seems like an obvious choice to get that treatment.