Danny DeVito has claimed that a sequel to Twins featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger was almost made before the action star’s political career got in the way.
The popular comedy was produced in 1988, and it depicted the unlikely brothers discovering that they had been separated at infancy and embarking on a mission to find their biological mother.
It was a surprising blockbuster, grossing more over $210 million at the global box office and earning the two the highest payouts of their cinematic careers owing to some shrewd negotiating behind the scenes.
There were originally talks of a second picture in 2012, with Eddie Murphy joining the cast as their long-lost triplet, but this was officially cancelled following the death of filmmaker Ivan Reitman.
However, it turns out that another film was in the works that was never completed due to Arnie’s election as Governor of California in 2003.
Speaking to GQ, Danny, who starred as Vincent Benedict, said: ‘Arnold and I want to work together. We missed Twins 2, because he became governor – which, he should have done Twins 2 instead of becoming governor.
‘Now we have a little thing going, a little project that we’ve been chatting about.’
He emphasised that the initiative has nothing to do with Twins, but he was tight-lipped about the specifics.
‘It’s just two friends, two guys, because we have a good time together,’ he added to the outlet. ‘We complement each other in a lot of ways. I am way stronger than he is.’
Never change, Danny.
Arnie previously discussed the extraordinary success of Twins, which followed his roles in the Terminator trilogy and Conan the Barbarian, and said that he had to push for the picture to be created since studio executives didn’t believe he could transfer into comedy.
During a recent talk at 92NY to promote his new book, Be Useful, he reflected on his huge Hollywood career, admitting: ‘First they said to me that I can never be an action star, or a leading man, because of my accent, and because my body is overdeveloped, and because my name, no one can pronounce.
‘There were all these reasons why it was a “no, it can’t be done.” Then when I proved to them that I could do it … all of a sudden, I was taking off as the action hero in the 80s.
‘Then when I have arrived and now I’m this big action star, getting $20million a movie, I said, I don’t want to just do action movies. My vision expanded and I want to also do comedies.
‘But the studio said, “Why would we do that? Why would we finance a movie that we don’t know if it will ever make money, when we have a guarantee with the action movies?”’
‘They didn’t go for it,’ he continued. ‘So then Ivan Reitman, who directed Ghostbusters, came to me said: “I see that you have a great sense of humor and I think that we can develop something for you. Let me think about it.” And he developed Twins, he then came up with the idea with Danny DeVito.
‘We made a deal with Universal Studios and we said, you do not have to take much risk, because none of us will take a salary … But in return, we’re going to get 37.5% ownership of the movie. They went for it.
‘To shoot the movie [cost] $16.5million and they don’t have to pay the salaries, so there’s very little risk involved. We ended up making more money on that movie….
‘This was the first movie that ever made over $100million at the box office. It made $128million domestically, $216million internationally. Imagine 37%, we divided it up according to our salaries. So, I made a lot of money…’
And the rest is history.
Source My Celebrity Life.