Mike Fleming

BREAKING: Lionsgate is setting a release date of January 18, 2013 for The Last Stand, the Kim Jee-Woon-directed return vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger. That puts the film in wide release on the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. Schwarzenegger plays a cop who leaves the LAPD in disgrace and takes a job in a sleepy border town. There’s little action until when an escaped drug kingpin heads toward the toonlwn at 200 mph in a specially outfitted car with a hostage and a fierce army of gang member escorts. The cop is the only thing standing in the way of the kingpin making it back across the border to safety. This was one of several projects that Schwarzenegger had percolating after he exited as California governor, until the subsequent paternity scandal seemed to cool everything off–the others included Cry Macho and a reprise as The Terminator. Deadline revealed earlier this month that The Last Stand had come back together as Schwarzenegger’s return vehicle. It’ll be a test of his popularity, but it is clearly the kind of vehicle that fans of his old action films want to see him making. Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing and Andrew Knauer and Jeffrey Nachmanoff wrote the script.