Arnold Schwarzenegger was originally going to play the title role in "RoboCop" (1987), but problems with the costume caused producers to drop the idea. After Schwarzenegger saw "RoboCop," he said that he loved the movie and wanted to work with director Paul Verhoeven. Schwarzenegger sent him the script to "Total Recall" (1990) and Verhoeven loved it, but wanted to make some changes; he wanted the film to have more of a scientific basis. Schwarzenegger liked how Verhoeven balanced the mind games with action.
During his audition, Robert Picardo suggested to Verhoeven that his character Johnnycab (below) should ask Schwarzenegger's character Quaid, "Are you from out of town?" to poke fun at Arnold's Austrian accent). Verhoeven angrily told Picardo, "No, no, no...you don't do that with Arnold!"
The female leads, Rachel Ticotin and Sharon Stone, were chosen in part for their athleticism, which was needed for the physically demanding roles. Stone said that her physically formidable character resulted in the cast and crew treating her like she was "one of the guys," and that co-star Michael Ironside "was the one guy who never forgot I was a woman. When I was thrown down, he would help me up." When filming their fight scene, Verhoeven asked second unit director Vic Armstrong to not choreograph the fight as a "catfight," but more like a martial arts fight, to give the feel of two "warriors" fighting each other and not simply two women.
The making of this film inspired another epic film project partnership between Schwarzenegger and Verhoeven, where they planned to make a movie about the Middle Eastern Crusades, as the two men agreed that a film of that scale would be a great follow-up project to "Total Recall." The project reportedly got as far as having a completed screenplay, sets, props and costumes, and was nearly entering production. Unfortunately, producer Mario Kassar and his Carolco studio ran into extended financial problems. Not being able to afford two huge projects at the same time, Kassar green-lit "Cutthroat Island" (1995) and canceled the Crusade project, and the subsequent commercial failure of the former bankrupted the studio, shelving the project indefinitely. (IMDb/Wikipedia)