Antoine Fuqua Might Swap Bruce Willis for Arnold Schwarzenegger in THE TOMB

Now that he no longer has that pesky government job to worry about, Arnold Schwarzenegger is extensively weighing his options for return to full-time acting.  The awkwardly titled WWII drama With Wings as Eagles was an early contender.  Then Schwarzenegger’s attention shifted to more nostalgic consideration of remakes or sequels  to The Terminator, Predator, and Running Man.  Thankfully, momentum has swung back in favor of original screenplays earlier today, linking Schwarzenegger to The Last Stand. Variety adds one more film to the list, suggesting The Tomb is right next to The Last Stand on Schwarzenegger’s priorities.

Antoine Fuqua (Brooklyn’s Finest) will direct The Tomb, which revolves around a structural security expert who is jailed in a high-security prison he designed.  When we first heard about the project, Bruce Willis in talks to star; it is not specified what happened to those negotiations, only that Schwarzenegger is now eying the role.  More after the break:

First, a more detailed synopsis from our initial report:

[Schwarzenegger] would play Ray Breslin, the world’s foremost authority on structural security.  After analyzing every high security prison and learning a vast array of survival skills so he can design escape-proof prisons, his skills are put to the test. He’s framed and incarcerated in a master prison he designed himself. He needs to escape and find the person who put him behind bars.

My impression is that the film geek community (if not necessarily Schwarzenegger’s core audience) has voted in favor of The Last Stand, in part to support Korean filmmaker Kim Ji-Woon.  (The Last Stand will be Kim’s English-language debut.)  The Tomb sounds like a fine alternative to me.

Fuqua has tentative plans to shoot the rap biopic Tupac this summer, which could delay The Tomb long enough to send Schwarzenegger elsewhere.  Variety’s sources indicate that Schwarzenegger has met with Fuqua and Summit several times in recent weeks, both sides expressing “mutual interest” in working together.

We’ll see how this pans out.  In the meantime, you can rely on the cartoon version of Schwarzenegger hamming it up in the animated series The Governator.