Upon his return to the acting scene, Arnold Schwarzenegger has drawn an interesting group of performers to his comeback project, Kim Ji-woon‘s The Last Stand. The film, Ji-woon’s English language debut (he gave us the highly-regarded I Saw the Devil), concerns “a cop in a border town as he tries to prevent a Mexican drug cartel leader from escaping to his home country.”
The film, which began shooting today (October 17th, 2011), also stars up-and-comer Friday Night Lights star Zach Gilford, Jaimie Alexander (the attractive goddess in Thor that Thor probably should’ve gotten it on with), Rodrigo Santoro (Xerxes from 300), as well as reliable character vets Luis Guzman, Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville and Harry Dean Stanton.
The one question few people have not stopped to ask is: is Arnie still bankable? Few stars are anymore, especially those as old as he. And while Sylvester Stallone can still crowd a theater, it takes a familiar character or him plus every other action star in the world to make that happen. Recall that the former Mr. Universe’s recent films prior to his gubernatorial reign included such misses as End of Days, The 6th Day and Collateral Damage. In fact, the three listed are his last three, not counting Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, a familiar character The Last Stand will not provide.
Lionsgate is producing the material with a scheduled release date of January 18th, 2013.
Will you pay to see Schwarzenegger on the big screen once again?