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Arnold Schwarzenegger Admits He Tricked Sylvester Stallone Into Doing One Of His Biggest Flops

The two action stars competed for Hollywood roles in the '80s and '90s.

John Sundholm
Nov. 09, 2022
Arnold Schwarzenegger Admits He Tricked Sylvester Stallone Into Doing One Of His Biggest Flops
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Actors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone may be besties nowadays, but during their 1980s and 1990s Hollywood heyday, they were rivals, frequently competing for the same action-hero roles.

And it seems Schwarzenegger got pretty crafty about it back in the day, actually tricking Stallone into doing one of the biggest flops of his career, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

The story of Arnie duping Sly into making the stinker has long been Hollywood legend, but in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Schwarzenegger confirmed that in this case the rumors are "100 percent true."

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot paired Stallone with Golden Girls star Estelle Getty as a mom-and-son detective team that get into all sorts of hijinx trying to solve a murder Getty's titular Mom witnesses.

It went about as well as it sounds like it would, tanking at the box office and sitting very un-pretty at a 14% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Legend has it that in hopes of getting Stallone to fumble into doing the film, Schwarzenegger leaked to the press that he had read the script and was interested in signing on--a gambit that worked handily. As Stallone told The Hollywood Reporter:

“I had heard Schwarzenegger was going to do that movie and I said, ‘I’m going to beat him to it. I think he set me up.”

And it turns out, he definitely was set up. Schwarzenegger told THR:

“It’s 100 percent true. In those days we did all kinds of crazy things to get ahead in our rivalry."
"Luckily for us and everyone else, today, we root for each other. Thank God, because we sure don’t ever need another ‘Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.’”

Nowadays, the two are fast friends--the even carved pumpkins together last month, as Sly shared on Instagram.

And on social media, fans loved this tale of two Hollywood buddies' former status as conniving frenemies.








Stallone also said he and Schwarzenegger have bonded over their status as two of the last remaining true Hollywood action superstars, telling THR he told Arnie " We are the last two tyrannosaurus... So we better enjoy each other.”