Arnold Schwarzenegger channels True Lies for first major TV role in new espionage thriller

He’s dominated the box office for decades, and now The Terminator himself is heading to the small screen for his first starring role. Get ready for Arnold Schwarzenegger, super spy.

Deadline reports the Terminator and Last Action Hero star will headline and produce a new Skydance Television project described as a “global spy adventure with a father (Schwarzenegger) and daughter at the center of the story.” No network has been locked in yet, but the untitled show is reportedly being shopped around to streaming services. Behind the scenes, the project is being produced and developed by Scorpion’s Nick Santora.

As fans familiar with Schwarzenegger’s film catalog might notice, the plot here bares at least some resemblance to the actor’s 1994 film True Lies, about a husband and father who is secretly a super spy, and things go haywire when his wife and daughter get caught up in the action. Hey, who knows, maybe they’ll bring Eliza Dushku back as Schwarzenegger’s daughter here, too?

Though he’s been a staple of the big screen for years, Schwarzengger has rarely ventured into television. He hosted NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice back in 2017, and of course spent some time as California’s governor. But aside from that, he’s played various versions of an unstoppable Terminator in about a half-dozen franchise films, plus led major action and sci-fi films like Conan the Barbarian, Total Recall, The Running Man, Predator and about a billion more across the 1980s and 1990s.

In an era where it’s becoming more and more common for movie stars to make the jump to the small screen, there are few A-list star projects that can surprise — but this is definitely one of them. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops, and which streaming service wins the inevitable bidding war.