‘He looked like the Michelin Man’: Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to play this famous sci-fi hero, but he looked ridiculous in a suit

What if, after lending his features to the mighty Conan the Barbarian, the terrifying T-800, the indestructible Colonel John Matrix from Commando and the wonderful Major Schaefer from Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger also played another famous movie hero?

In the early ’80s, when Paul Verhoeven was looking for someone to put in the armor of his RoboCop – this cop brutally murdered and turned into a vigilante cyborg – the Aussie-bodied actor was one of them anyway. The main candidates.

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“Schwarzenegger wanted to be RoboCop”said the film’s screenwriter, Michael Miner, in the documentary series The Movies That Made Us, available on Netflix.

Like Michael Ironside and Peter Fonda, the Terminator interpreter auditioned for the role. Problem ? His super imposing build – coupled with Robocop’s also very massive armor – instantly gave him the air of the Michelin Man!

“ and Mike Medavoy became friends (…)Because Terminator was an Orion movie”– says Paul M. Sammon, vice president of the studio.

“It won’t work.”

“Then they started designing the armor together with Botin to get to Arnold. But it looked like Bibendum. It was too exaggerated, too big. Something this big is no drama. This item is indestructible. Invincible. They said, “That won’t work.”

As everyone knows, Arnold Schwarzenegger gave way to Peter Weller, who played Alex J. in Verhoeven’s film. He played the role of Murphy (aka Robocop).

Schwartz isn’t the only action movie star to be turned down for a famous sci-fi character, as a few years earlier, it was Jean-Claude Van Damme who was recently passed over for the role of the Predator alien.

Would you like to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Robocop suit?

(Re)discover all the ‘Robocop’ mistakes…