For years, audiences have been hoping Arnold Schwarzenegger would return to the role of Conan the Barbarian one more time. And Schwarzenegger has frequently talked about taking up the sword once again. But so far, nothing has happened – save for a forgotten reboot starring Jason Momoa. So what happened? According to a new interview with Schwarzenegger, rights issues have held up his potential third Conan film, and there’s no indication of when that might change. But when and if it does, Arnold still wants to play the part.

In 2012, Warner Bros. announced that Arnold Schwarzenegger would return for The Legend of Conan. The film would completely ignore the Jason Momoa reboot, and return Schwarzenegger to the iconic role he played in Conan the Barbarian and its sequel, Conan the Destroyer. Arnold continued to talk about the film off and on over the years, but we’ve yet to see it actually happen. Now, the actor has offered an explanation for the delay. Speaking with The Arnold Fans, Schwarzenegger said:

“When it comes to the movie, the sad stuff about all of this is when there’s an estate like this…The Robert E. Howard estate…when someone buys these rights, those people now own the rights and they have their own vision of what they want to do and the guy that has the rights is some young guy and he’s trying to figure out how to get his way through Hollywood and this is not easy to do…So there are people that say to him, ‘Why don’t you start with a TV series?’ and then he negotiates for a TV series and that falls apart. And then he goes maybe to Netflix and that falls apart. Then he decides to make a movie maybe.”

Certainly sounds frustrating. Especially because the idea for the potential Schwarzenegger movie sounds very cool:

“We have been trying to convince [the rights holder] for years now that the way to go is to come back and hire a really great director and to do another Conan movie and have me play King Conan, when Conan is like 70 years old and he’s disgusted by sitting on the throne and being the king and then something happens after that. It’s really not that far from creating a finished script. The only one who really has to pull the trigger there is the people who own the Conan rights to do a movie. Let’s go to Netflix or whoever it is, let’s hire a director who’s very creative and can elevate the project to make it a winning project.”

The idea of Arnold playing an older, grizzled, Conan who starts slaughtering again because he’s bored is fantastic, and I want to see it happen. Hopefully, some day it will.