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Television

12th Nov 2020

Arnold Schwarzenegger to star in his first scripted TV show for Netflix

Wil Jones

I’ll be back… to the small screen

After decades as one of the world’s biggest movie stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to star in his first-ever scripted TV drama.

According to Deadline, Netflix has picked up the as-yet-untitled spy show, which Arnie will executive produce as well as starring in.

The show is described by Deadline as a “global spy adventure” focused on a father-daughter duo, with Schwarzenegger in the father role and Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick) as his offspring.

It is created by Nick Santora, who is also executive producer and showrunner on Amazon’s upcoming Jack Reacher series. The show has been developed by Skydance TV, who have an established track record with Netflix producing shows like Grace and Frankie and Altered Carbon.

This will be the first time Arnold Schwarzenegger has starred in a scripted TV series. It is not his first time headlining a TV show though: in 2017 he was the host of The New Celebrity Apprentice, replacing Donald Trump on the business-based gameshow (doesn’t that feel like a really, really long time ago now?).

Prior to superstardom, Schwarzenegger made appearances on several TV shows in the late 1970s, including the detective drama The Streets of San Francisco and sitcom The San Pedro Beach Bums. He also made a cameo on a 2015 episode of Two and a Half Men.

Arnie was last seen on the big screen in Terminator: Dark Fate, where he played a killer time-travelling robot for the fifth time. He also appeared in the Russian-Chinese blockbuster Viy 2: Journey to China, which saw him appear alongside Jackie Chan, marking the first time the two action icons had been on-screen together in a film.

He will next be seen playing the President in Kung Fury 2, the feature-length adaptation of the popular tongue-in-cheek internet short film.