Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Lost Captain Blood Would Have Been a ’90s Pirates of the Caribbean
In the 1990s, Arnold Schwarzenegger had already played a barbarian, a cyborg assassin, a superspy, and even a pregnant man, making him one of Hollywood’s most versatile action stars. According to director Chuck Russell, he and Schwarzenegger once seriously discussed taking the actor into an unexpected new role: a pirate in a reboot of Captain Blood, the adventure story based on Rafael Sabatini’s novel.
Russell revealed the project while speaking about the 30th anniversary of Eraser, the 1996 action thriller he ultimately directed with Schwarzenegger. He said Warner Bros. was interested in the Captain Blood script and that it was a “different kind” of take on the classic character, most famously portrayed by Errol Flynn in the 1935 film. Although Schwarzenegger was known mostly for modern action films, Russell believed his larger-than-life screen presence could carry a pirate epic. He also joked that there was discussion of Arnold wearing tights, which Russell quickly rejected. Instead, he had concept art made showing Schwarzenegger in leather pants, creating a more rugged look for the character.
The Captain Blood idea came after Russell’s success with The Mask, and he developed the project with screenwriter Frank Darabont, who later wrote The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist. Russell said Schwarzenegger wanted him to direct his next film because he liked The Mask. He described their version of Captain Blood as a fun action-adventure movie with a tone that would later resemble Pirates of the Caribbean. In other words, the project aimed to blend swashbuckling spectacle with the kind of high-energy entertainment Schwarzenegger excelled at.
But while Captain Blood moved slowly through development, Eraser gained immediate momentum. Schwarzenegger brought Russell the screenplay, and Warner Bros. wanted to move forward right away. Russell said Eraser was a movie that “wanted to happen right now,” while Captain Blood remained stuck in the usual delays and complications of big-budget filmmaking. As a result, the pirate project was put aside so that Schwarzenegger could instead make Eraser, trading swords and ships for railguns, action sequences, alligators, and parachutes.
Russell said there was no single reason the pirate movie never happened. He explained that projects of that scale require many elements to line up perfectly before they can be approved, and even a project he was passionate about can fall apart because of the realities of Hollywood development. The collapse of Captain Blood left behind only concept art and the idea of Schwarzenegger as a pirate hero.
Although the film never sailed into production, the story highlights just how ambitious Schwarzenegger’s career options were at the time. It also shows how close Hollywood came to giving him one of his strangest leading roles. Instead of becoming a pirate, Schwarzenegger went on to star in Eraser, but the unrealized Captain Blood remains a fascinating what-if from the peak of his stardom.
