40 years ago, the unlikely acting career of then-bodybuilding champion Arnold Schwarzenegger went off with a bang in Conan the Barbarian (1982). Based on Robert E. Howard’s character of the same name from 1930s pulp magazines, Arnold’s epic sword and sorcery film was helmed by writer-director John Milius, the militant filmmaker best known for writing the Oscar-nominated screenplay Apocalypse Now (1979) for fellow “Movie Brat” Francis Ford Coppola. But in the end, Milius would share a co-screenwriting credit on Conan the Barbarian with Oliver Stone.

Stone penned an earlier draft in 1978 as the first of several studio assignments that would one day feel out of step with the politically-charged writer-director the world would soon celebrate for films like Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and JFK (1991). At the time, his Conan the Barbarian script was titled simply as Conan. But the title is just about the only thing simple about this early draft.

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Stone’s Conan was a studio executive’s worst nightmare. The script called for a nearly four hour runtime, epic battle sequences, countless extras, live animals, excessive costumes and props, and one expensive set piece after another. His vision was doomed to be rewritten for budgetary constraints. However, seemingly none of this entered into Stone’s thinking at the time, as he wrote his Conan script while under the influence of cocaine and downers. And it shows.

Oliver Stone Believed in Arnold Schwarzenegger Before Many in Hollywood

     Cinema 5

Charles Bronson was originally the front-runner to star as the titular barbarian. But after watching a rough cut of docudrama Pumping Iron (1977), the original Conan producers Edward R. Pressman and Edward Summer knew they had found their man. With a godlike body that won him the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition six years in a row, Schwarzenegger embodied Conan as close as humanly possible. With his long brunet hair and leather headband, he looked as if he had stepped right off the pages of the Marvel Comics run from the 1970s.

In spite of Schwarzenegger’s uncanny physical resemblance to the Conan character, there was one little snag. No one doubted he had the look. But many involved in the project had their reservations about Arnold’s molasses-thick Austrian accent. At the time it seemed to Schwarzenegger that all of Hollywood shared this cold apprehension. Speaking to GQ in 2019 about his most iconic characters, Schwarzenegger said:

Luckily there were a few players in Hollywood who did believe in the Austrian bodybuilder’s potential as a leading man. Among those who never doubted Schwarzenegger was the Conan screenwriter Oliver Stone. In his autobiography Chasing the Light (2020), Stone said:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Read Conan’s Lines to Oliver Stone

     Universal Pictures

Stone’s conviction in Schwarzenegger’s ability to pull off the role was even stronger than Arnold’s Germanic accent. In fact, Stone crafted Conan’s dialogue in his screenplay to Arnold’s actual voice, having Schwarzenegger read aloud from lines of Marvel’s Conan comics. As a result, Stone’s Conan script has its share of dialogue as corny as those from the Marvel Comics run. Still, it’s a safe bet that fans of Milius’ finished film would jump at the chance to hear Arnold deliver some of Stone’s corniest lines. Imagine that heavy Austrian accent dropping a line like the one on page 111 of Stone’s screenplay:

Imagine Arnold’s delivery of the line on page 130 when, in the midst of the film’s final battle, Conan’s love interest and blonde female warrior Valeria slays a Pig Mutant (Stone’s script has plenty of those) with her sword “in a magnificent arc” and Conan says to her with “eyes blazing with attraction:"

As hilarious as Stone’s lines would have sounded in Arnold’s broken English, Milius gave the Austrian actor just enough ridiculous dialogue to draw eyebrows from film critics. Take the most iconic line (and most mocked for Schwarzenegger’s accent) from Conan the Barbarian which was lifted from a Ghenghis Khan speech about his idea of the good life. When he is asked in Milius’ film “What is best in life?” by a Mongol General character, Conan says:

Stone and Milius’ Conan scripts (as well as many of their other films) share a similarly masculine approach, especially in terms of over-the-top dialogue. Still, there are important differences between their visions for Conan the Barbarian. And the cocaine Stone was doing at the time is certainly one of them.

Oliver Stone’s Conan Script Was Post-Apocalyptic

For his plot, Stone took several cues from Howard’s early Conan stories like the novella A Witch Shall Be Born (1934) and short story Black Colossus (1933), both of which were published in the pulp fiction magazine Weird Tales.

As opposed to Milius’ finished film which takes place in the vaguely distant past, Stone’s Conan screenplay is set in a post-apocalyptic future wherein Conan leads an army in an epic battle against a 10,000-strong horde of half-animal, half-human mutants. But this battle was not to be waged specifically against Thulsa Doom, played memorably by James Earl Jones as the central villain in Milius’ film. While Stone’s script also opens with the raid on young Conan’s village like Milius’, it is not Thulsa Doom who is responsible for the death of his family. Stone’s script is not really a tale of revenge like Milius’ but, rather, Conan’s rise from slavery to leading a band of mercenaries and a ravaged army into an epic, climactic battle.

Oliver Stone On Cocaine and Conan

     Abrams, Inc.

Milius described Stone’s early draft as a “total drug fever dream”. And he wasn’t kidding. When Stone was asked by Total Film about how he quit cocaine before tackling his next script (Scarface, which would be directed by Brian DePalma in 1983), Stone said:

“Shallow” is an interesting way to describe his own writing from this period. Especially in light of scenes like the one on page 67 of his Conan script, set in one of Stone’s many debauchery-filled set pieces:

It may not be apparent from a brief synopsis of its epic plot points, but Stone went on a description-happy rampage. He filled the pages of his script with grandiose visions of lavish set pieces, creature makeup, and complex effects shots transcribed in vivid detail.

Oliver Stone’s Conan Script Feels Like a Drug Dream

     Marvel

What do you get when you take inspiration from pulp fiction fantasy tales, Hieronymus Bosch’s apocalyptic paintings, William Blake’s poetry, Marvel Comics, the real-life voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, of course, a lot of cocaine? A Conan the Barbarian script that feels like it was written by someone on cocaine. And Stone’s awkward use of poetic prose in the screenplay runs even deeper than just Blake. On page 45, when Conan fights a giant serpent, Stone references Dante’s Inferno by literally inserting a quote from the 14th century epic poem.

There is perhaps no better example of Stone’s excessive descriptions and fixation with sex, drugs, live animals, part-animal prosthetics, and countless extras than on pages 96 and 97 when a beggar, who hunts big rats similar to the “rodents of unusual size” from The Princess Bride (1987) in underground tunnels, has agreed to show Conan a hidden entrance to a palace filled with mutants and animals engaged in debauchery of every sort.

Stone’s Conan screenplay reads as if Hollywood commissioned a drunken Jack Kerouac to write a remake of Gunga Din (1939). It’s like if Denis Villeneuve decided that his Dune (2021) adaptation could use some extra scenes with concubines. Or if George Lucas insisted on doubling the runtime of The Return of the Jedi (1983) and filling it with set pieces as expensive as Jabba’s palace. If Oliver Stone wrote The Empire Strikes Back (1980) with half the bravado and cocaine that he wrote Conan with, then he would have wanted the Dagobah set to have twice as many live snakes. He’d have wanted as many live snakes as Spielberg would soon use in the tomb set piece for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Oliver Stone’s Conan Would Have Cost a Fortune

Stone’s script was destined for a rewrite from his first pass. It was doomed from the page count alone: 141 pages (90 to 120 pages is the standard). Had Stone’s Conan script actually been attempted, it would have been around three to four hours long, and with the insanely large battle sequences and set pieces it would have easily cost more than twice its $20 million budget at the time. Even Stone admitted to Total Film that it would have probably cost upwards of “$50 million” to bring his coked-out vision to the screen. And Stone “had a vision of 12 [Conan] movies, like a Bond series,” where Schwarzenegger would return every few years for another installment.

Not only would this series of 12 Conan the Barbarian films fail to materialize, but in 1979, the original Conan producer Pressman was stuck with his back against the wall. Nobody in Hollywood wanted to foot the bill for his swords and sorcery epic with Schwarzenegger’s low profile and Stone’s bonkers script. And this from a film industry which was greenlighting fantasy films left and right in the wake of the original Star Wars (1977). So Pressman turned to the European market and sold the rights to Conan the Barbarian to the one man who couldn’t pump out Star Wars ripoffs fast enough, Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis. Dino, in turn, would quickly hire John Milius to rewrite Stone’s screenplay. And the rest is history.