Arnold Schwarzenegger Almost Played DC's Sgt. Rock – And Then It Fell Apart

Warner Bros. threw the film industry a curveball when it abruptly shut down pre-production on Luca Guadagnino's "Sgt. Rock." The DC Studios production carried a $70 million budget (reasonable for a studio war flick based on a comic book), had attracted a killer cast that included Colin Farrell (who took over the role from Daniel Craig) and Mike Faist and David Jonsson, and was set to shoot this summer. Some felt it was an odd choice for Guadagnino, but he's made a career out of odd choices. I still don't know if I like his earth-tone remake of Dario Argento's "Suspiria," but I respect the audacity. To his maverick credit, Guadagnino's "Sgt. Rock," which got greenlit primarily because DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran flipped for "Challenger" writer Justin Kuritzkes' screenplay, almost certainly wouldn't have been the "Sgt. Rock" movie I've been clamoring for since the late 1980s. And I was fine with that.

That's because the version of "Sgt. Rock" I want to see ain't coming back. Created by writer Robert Kanigher and artist Joe Kuber in 1959, Sgt. Franklin John Rock was the laconic, tough-as-nails leader of the U.S. Army's Easy Company. Though I gravitated toward superhero comic books in the 1980s, I enjoyed the rugged, bloody artwork of "Sgt. Rock." I enjoyed the camaraderie of Easy Company, and I liked that they killed a lot of Nazis. It was an onslaught of death that an adolescent could handle because Nazis were, along with the Ku Klux Klan (as seen and blasted to kingdom come in Ryan Coogler's masterful "Sinners"), the ultimate bad guys. Indiana Jones killed them by the bushel in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," so I didn't think twice about Easy Company mowing them down with zero mercy.

At some point in the late 1980s, I read in Variety that a "Sgt. Rock" movie was in development with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the title tough guy. Initially, I found it odd that an Austrian movie star would get cast as an all-American U.S. Army leader, but when I read that John McTiernan would be directing from a screenplay by Steven E. de Souza, with Joel Silver producing, my worries vanished. They'd gotten the "Die Hard" team back together! This was a guaranteed blockbuster.

Why didn't it happen? Blame Clint Eastwood.

The timeline is a little tricky here, but the first iteration of Silver's "Sgt. Rock" was penned by David Webb Peoples, the god-tier screenwriter of "Blade Runner" and "Unforgiven." Schwarzenegger was attached at this point, but, for whatever reason, Peoples' script didn't pass muster, so they went to de Souza. This was a perfect fit for numerous reasons. De Souza had already written "Commando" for the Schwarzenegger-Silver duo, and had collaborated with the former on "The Running Man." This was a winning team even before McTiernan got thrown into the mix.

McTiernan had established himself as an action maestro in 1987 with "Predator," and cemented those bona fides a year later with "Die Hard." The McTiernan-Silver-de Souza triumvirate was as sought after a filmmaking package as existed in Hollywood at the time. With Schwarzenegger attached, they could've secured a bank-breaking budget for an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native."

In a 2013 interview with Den of Geek's Mike Cecchini, de Souza said "Sgt. Rock" wasn't just greenlit, it was fast-tracked. They were planning to shoot in the former Yugoslavia. They even had a release date. De Souza's prior experiences with Schwarzenegger were hugely positive, so it seemed like "Sgt. Rock" was full speed ahead. The vibes were so on point that no one balked when Schwarzenegger said his involvement was contingent on one stipulation. As de Souza told Cecchini:

"We put this movie together and at the very first meeting, he said to Joel Silver (Arnold voice), 'I just bought a house in Sun Valley, Idaho and Clint Eastwood is always making his movies there and then he drives home, while I'm schlepping all over the world. So I'd like to make this movie in Sun Valley, and Clint does all his locations right there and uses local talent, and I want that in my contract.'"

They must've thought Schwarzenegger was joking. He was not.

"Sgt. Rock" cleared what felt like its biggest hurdle to production when de Souza finished his outline before the start of the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike. "If I say 'these ten sets have to be built,' they know I'm not gonna change my mind and say, 'Well, I changed my mind, there is no dentist's office' or whatever," de Souza said. "So they started early preparations so we could hit the ground running when the strike ended." When the strike ended after 153 days, de Souza knocked out his screenplay in just two weeks.

Everything was moving quickly at this point. Location scouting was underway in Yugoslavia, while the casting process ramped up. They were making this movie. In what must've felt like a formality, Schwarzenegger dropped by the Warner Bros. lot one day to get fitted for his Sgt. Rock uniform. While making small talk with the costume designer, he learned the film would be shooting some 5,000 miles away from Sun Valley, Idaho. According to de Souza:

"[T]he costume designer said to him, 'I can't wait 'til we start filming. They say the Adriatic Coast is just like the Mediterranean!' And Arnold said [Arnold voice], 'Vat?' And she says, 'You know, the Yugoslavian coast, the beaches and resorts are fabulous.' And Arnold, with his pants still pinned up, walked right over to the front office of the studio and said, 'I said that I wouldn't leave the continental US for this project. What's going on here?'"

The death of "Sgt. Rock" was swift and unceremonious. "As I understand it," said de Souza, "They called Joel Silver, John McTiernan, and some executives over, and, whatever happened in that room, I wasn't present, but Arnold left the project, and McTiernan left, too." De Souza speculated that Schwarzenegger's demand must have been legally binding for WB to let a tentpole action film die in a single meeting after an innocent costume fitting. My guess is that Silver's loss was Paul Verhoeven's gain, as "Total Recall" went into production right around the same time.

It's a shame because de Souza said they'd taken Schwarzenegger's accent into account and reworked the character. "[W]e had it set up so that Sgt. Rock was Austrian and his family had been killed by the Nazis [...]," said de Souza. "He climbed over the mountains right behind the Von Trapp family. Nobody else could have filled that role the way it was written." 

Silver didn't give up on "Sgt. Rock." A-list screenwriters like John Milius (who must've been brought in to lure Schwarzenegger back to the project) and Brian Helgeland did passes on the script. Guy Ritchie and Francis Lawrence flirted with directing the film, and Bruce Willis once became loosely attached. Quentin Tarantino was offered the opportunity to film Peoples' screenplay. Those iterations ultimately fell apart, and now "Sgt. Rock" is dead yet again.