Patrick Schwarzenegger pitches ‘Triplets’ with dad Arnold, Danny DeVito

Patrick Schwarzenegger has an idea to share the big screen with his dad, Arnold Schwarzenegger 

In newly-shared behind-the-scenes footage from the father-son duo’s Actors on Actors conversation, the Schwarzeneggers reunited with the Governator’s frequent collaborator Danny DeVito, who was present to shoot an interview with Colin Farrell. As the trio of actors posed for a photo, Patrick Schwarzenegger quipped, “This could be Triplets.”

The White Lotus actor was of course referring to his dad and DeVito’s iconic turn in the 1988 comedy Twins, in which the polarizingly-statured duo starred as twin brothers separated at birth. 

Schwarzenegger was almost certainly joking about joining the squad for a Twins follow-up, but with the resounding success of decades-later legacy sequels like Top Gun: Maverick, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Twisters, you can’t completely rule out the possibility of Triplets.

DeVito and the elder Schwarzenegger, who also costarred in Junior, were actually very close to making Triplets at multiple points. The film originally intended to introduce Eddie Murphy as a long-lost third brother when it was first announced in 2012. (Murphy himself is no stranger to legacy sequels — over the last four years, he’s starred in follow-ups to both Coming to America and Beverly Hills Cop). 

In 2021, production on Triplets drew nearer with original director Ivan Reitman returning and Tracy Morgan coming aboard as a replacement for Murphy. 

The project ultimately fell apart after Reitman died in 2022 at age 75. Schwarzenegger told The Hollywood Reporter that the filmmaker’s son, Juno director Jason Reitman, pulled the plug on the project. “Jason Reitman f—ed it up!” he said. “Jason Reitman literally stopped the project when his father died.”

Schwarzenegger continued, “His father wanted to do it really badly. I wanted to do it really badly. Danny DeVito wanted to do it really badly. We had the financing. When his father passed away, Jason says, ‘I never liked the idea’ and put a hold on it.” (Jason Reitman himself helmed a legacy sequel to his father’s most famous franchise in 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, so it’s not clear why he’d be opposed to this kind of project.)

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The lunacy of the original Twins — which saw Schwarzenegger play a fish-out-of-water who finally meets his fellow genetically modified twin, a small-time crook portrayed by DeVito — allows for practically anything to potentially happen in a theoretical sequel. Who’s to say Patrick Schwarzenegger couldn’t be the result of a frozen embryo leftover from the original experiment that produced the original twins? Just say he thawed out decades later, who cares!

If Triplets doesn’t come together, there are still an abundance of other Arnold classics that could hypothetically bring the star’s son in for a legacy sequel. Imagine Kindergarten Cop: Who is Your Daddy. Or Junior Junior. Second to Last Action Hero. Comman Dos. Truer Lies. The possibilities are endless.