Some of you may already be familiar with the origin story of how Sylvester Stallone came to star in the abysmal 1992 action comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
But I had to ask Arnold if the rumors I’d heard were true. Legend has it that Schwarzenegger read the script, thought it was terrible, but decided to purposefully leak it to the press that he was interested in starring in it in order to lure Stallone into getting jealous and trying to steal the film out from under him. So is it true, or just an apocryphal Hollywood story that’s been blown out of proportion over the years?
“True. I read the script. It was so bad. You know, I’ve also done some movies that went right in the toilet, right? That were bad. But this was really bad. So I went in – this was during our war – I said to myself, I’m going to leak out that I have tremendous interest. I know the way it works in Hollywood. I would then ask for a lot of money. So then they’d say, ‘Let’s go give it to Sly. Maybe we can get him for cheaper.’ So they told Sly, ‘Schwarzenegger’s interested. Here’s the press clippings. He’s talked about that. If you want to grab that one away from him, that is available.’ And he went for it! He totally went for it. A week later, I heard about it, ‘Sly is signing now to do this movie.’ And I said, [pumps fist] ‘Yes!'”
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