Conan The Barbarian Was Almost A Drug-Fueled Mess
Before 1982's Conan the Barbarian was produced, Oliver Stone had a crazy cocaine-fueled post-apocalyptic script with the warrior that would've been 4 hours long.
The 1982 sword and sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian helped to put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map as an actor, and it was a major success for John Milius, who both wrote and directed. Interestingly, though, Milius shares a screenwriting credit with fellow Hollywood legend Oliver Stone, and this is due to Stone writing a 1978 Conan adaptation that never had a chance at being made because it was too long, too expensive, and just too ambitious. However, MovieWeb reports that none of this mattered to the acclaimed director because when he wrote the script, he was actively using both cocaine and downers.
One reason Stone’s script for Conan the Barbarian was never produced is that it would have been four hours long. It would also require a small army of extras as well as plenty of live animals (which always make production more difficult) and enough wild set pieces to fuel a trilogy of barbarian films. Stone obviously wanted to create an epic movie to do justice to the character created by Robert E. Howard, and while the eventual movie we got had little resemblance to Stone’s vision (Stone, for example, wrote Conan into a post-apocalyptic setting where he’d have to fight against a horde of strange mutants), he may have ultimately influenced an important casting choice that helped make the movie a success.
Back in the late ‘70s, producers were strongly considering Charles Bronson to play Conan the Barbarian, and this would have resulted in a dramatically different film. But after the producers watched Schwarzenegger in the iconic documentary drama Pumping Iron, they decided to go with him due to his impressive and imposing physique. Due to the actor’s thick accent, though, many in the production and in Hollywood didn’t think he could be a successful actor, but Oliver Stone championed him as Conan the entire time.
Interestingly, in Oliver Stone’s mind, the most important asset Arnold Schwarzenegger had was not his powerful build but his charisma. In his autobiography, Stone wrote about how the actor’s smile and sense of humor meant that people were instantly drawn to him. And this was important for the character of Conan the Barbarian, who can abruptly pivot from being a lone savage to a charismatic leader of men.
Oliver Stone wanted Schwarzenegger so much for the role that he had the actor read aloud lines from Marvel’s popular Conan the Barbarian comics. Stone then went on to include some of those lines in his script, and this was likely meant to make the dialogue easier for Schwarzenegger and to make fans of the comic happy with the film. Considering how much people have made fun of his line deliveries from the final movie, we can only imagine how wild the criticism would be if Arnold was tossing off comic one-liners in his thick accent.
While this Conan the Barbarian never got made, it’s fun to read over Stone’s cocaine-powered script because it is filled with insane descriptions, random poetry, and everything else that sounded cool when the writer was very, very high. And there is something of the original barbarian spirit in Stone’s original draft. After all, writer Robert E. Howard described Conan as having “gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth,” and mixing downers and cocaine would certainly be enough to put the legendary director in such a state.
