TAFs in the Front Row While Arnold Talks New Movies!

Sunday, the last day of The Arnold Sports Festival, has always been our most anticipated and favorite day. This year was no exception. The Arnold training seminar titled "Champions & Legends Sunday Morning Showcase" is packed full of sleepy but dedicated Arnold fans. For the 25-year anniversary, they moved this event to a better venue: The Hilton Hotel. Not as cold and more intimate, this training seminar opens with an introduction by co-founder Jim Lorimer and then instantly moves right into an hour-long treat for the fans. Yep, “it is time” for Arnold to tell stories of his past, present and future in front of hundreds of his biggest fans!


We had many questions for Arnold that we wanted to ask and luckily, throughout the hour-long seminar, many of them were addressed! TheArnoldFans, sitting in the front row, waited to hear Schwarzenegger give us some movie news about The Last Stand, The Tomb and TEN in addition to the latest news on potential projects for the future!

When asked if a movie that he thought would be great but completely bombed, Arnold brought up his latest film (currently hitting many foreign territories).

"Well, the last movie I just did (The Last Stand) was a perfect example of that," admits Arnold. "Everyone looked at the movie and thought it was a great movie to make and the movie didn't do well in this country at all. But I remember when we did the Terminator movie, the first one. The studio looked at that as a cheap B movie and they didn't pay much attention to it at all. And then when it opened up in the fall it opened up as number one in the box office and then in the second weekend it was number one and the third weekend...and this is how it went. It was a highly successful movie and it was in TIME magazine as one of the top 10 of the year so we never really know. As a matter of fact, I have turned movies down that were huge successes and visa vesa. 90 percent of the movies fail and 10 percent of the movies make it. It's only like 4% of the movies that really make it, like SpiderMan, X-Men, Iron Man and those kinds of movies make it really big. The key thing to know is I pick scripts and I think 'does this movie sell internationally?' Because you don't want a movie just to do well in America, you want it to do well in Germany, France and Africa, Asian countries and everywhere around the world."


Schwarzenegger also said it's easy for him to step into any new action role, considering he's keeping fit.

"If you train every day and do your cardiovascular training and weight training and all this, you don't have to start from the beginning...you're already half way there. Maybe the director has certain things he wants you to train for and that's okay but you have such a big advantage when you train every day and you're in good shape. I mean I go in and I do all the stunts except the stunts where you could get seriously injured or killed," says Schwarzenegger.


Arnold also said he really liked The Tomb, which does not come out until September but he got an advanced screening. Also, VERY SOON Arnold will get to see an advanced cut of TEN!

"We finished The Tomb and I just saw that and It's looking terrific. The project that I haven't seen yet is TEN, the police drama that we shot in Atlanta. That's coming out after the Tomb (in January). I haven't seen that but I'll see that in March sometime. It's a very good script and a very good director: David Ayer who did End of Watch. He's a terrific director."


Schwarzenegger also said his next project is still not yet nailed down. We imagine Twins 2: Triplets and Conan are the lead contenders. He said he loved to work with James Earl Jones and Max Von Shadow in the first Conan. It will be exciting to see the talent involved in The Legend of Conan.