Movie Chronicles » Conan
This is an unofficial blog following Brett Ratner's Conan movie adaptation with a possible 2010 release, a re-imagining of Robert E. Howard's Conan character.

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Jason Momoa is Conan July 25th, 2010

In Jan­u­ary this year, Jason Momoa was announced as the new Conan the Bar­bar­ian, ahead of Kel­lan Lutz and Jared Padalecki (whilst Ron Perl­man will play Conan’s father). Below are a set of offi­cial and not so offi­cial pic­tures of Jason Momoa as Conan, do you think he looks the part?

Pic­tures from pro­duc­tion in Bulgaria

Roland Kickinger the new Conan? June 24th, 2009

Risky Busi­ness Blog are report­ing that Conan direc­tor Mar­cus Nis­pel, Lion­s­gate and Nu Image/Millennium have found their new Conan star, and he’s a dead ringer for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The 41 year old body builder from Aus­tria (yeah, you read that right), has recently become an actor; he played a T-800 in Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion. He’s also played a Conan era Arnie in a biopic enti­tled “See Arnold Run”. Are these par­al­lels begin­ning to scare you?

Shoot­ing is set to begin this fall, some­where in Bulgaria.

Marcus Nispel to direct new Conan movie June 11th, 2009

A short while ago we had word of a short­list of poten­tial Conan movie direc­tors; their spe­cialty was in hor­ror movies. The list included Christoph Gans, Neil Mar­shall and direc­tor of choice, Mar­cus Nis­pel. Nis­pel helmed the The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre and Fri­day the 13th remakes and more wor­ringly, the ter­ri­ble Viking movie, “Pathfinder”.

A new direc­tor was sought after Brett Rat­ner stepped down from the helm due to sched­ul­ing con­straints. The movie is likely to have a smaller bud­get and could begin pro­duc­tion as early as August this year, with reports sug­gest­ing Bul­garia as its locale.
Dirk Black­man and Howard McCain are cur­rently work­ing through Dean Don­nelly and Joshua Oppenheimer’s first draft.

An announce­ment as to who shall play Conan is expected shortly.

Brett Ratner no longer directing Conan, new director sought May 7th, 2009

Brett Rat­ner, direc­tor of Rush Hour 1–3 and the deplorable X-Men: The Last Stand, has dropped off the Conan project because of sched­ul­ing con­straints. Pro­ducer Joe Gatta revealed the news to Empire:

“We’re cur­rently in the process of hir­ing a direc­tor. […] For the past six months we were dis­cussing the movie with Brett Rat­ner, and for more tim­ing issues than any­thing else we had to part ways with Brett. We all wanted him to do it, believe me; just the tim­ing didn’t work. But you never know what can happen.”

“We have a poten­tial start-date on Conan of August 24. And we’ll be shoot­ing in Bul­garia. I would say though the empha­sis is on Conan [rather than Red Sonja]. It’s our crown jewel here at the com­pany and that will be the leader. Red Sonja prob­a­bly won’t hap­pen until next year, as far as mak­ing it goes. So we want to launch Conan and rein­vent the fran­chise.“

When a direc­tor is hired an almost imme­di­ate open cast­ing call for Conan shall commence.

Not an homage, not a remake March 17th, 2009

MTV have briefly spo­ken with Brett Rat­ner con­cern­ing the new Conan movie, Rat­ner revealed that the story shall return to its roots and the mythol­ogy of the char­ac­ters before com­ment­ing on his own involve­ment in the adaptation:

“The script is very cool, con­tem­po­rary,” Rat­ner told MTV News. “It’s not an homage. It’s not a remake, really. It’s going back to the orig­i­nal source mate­r­ial — the mythol­ogy of the characters.”

“[Screen­writ­ers Dirk Black­man and Howard McCain] just did an incred­i­ble, incred­i­ble job or else I wouldn’t be risk­ing it,” said Rat­ner. “Because I know how dif­fi­cult it is to do these movies and its some­thing that I’m really excited about.”

Script review of new Conan Movie February 24th, 2009

Latino Review have got their hands on Brett Ratner’s new Conan movie script, and to pre­vent pages of read­ing they have pre­sented it to us in a handy video fea­turette pro­duced by El May­imbe. It dis­cusses the open­ing few scenes in the movie, the main char­ac­ters and cast­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and the film’s poten­tial as a reboot along the lines of 300:


Latino Review

Conan lead should be an unknown February 19th, 2009

Speak­ing with MTV, Brett Rat­ner revealed that he expects the new Conan lead to be an unknown actor with the poten­tial to be iconic:

“I believe it should be an unknown,” Rat­ner hinted to MTV News. “Conan is kind of iconic. It’s kind of like when you do Superman.”

“Grow­ing up, my favorite comic book was ‘Conan,’” added Rat­ner. “[It] was the first comic book I ever read.”

How­ever, Rat­ner is well aware that tak­ing the reins on an all-new “Conan” project is a task wor­thy of the bar­bar­ian him­self. After all, the orig­i­nal series of films hold a spe­cial place in fanyboy’s hearts, and replac­ing Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger in the title role is darn-near sac­ri­lege. But Rat­ner, ever the opti­mist, believes the time is right for “Conan” to pil­lage the local mul­ti­plex once again.

“Look, it’s dif­fi­cult to fill those shoes,” insisted Rat­ner, “But they came up with a new Bat­man, they came up with a new James Bond, you know?”

Brett Ratner rumored to direct January 5th, 2009

In Novem­ber 2008, in a flurry of excite­ment from Conan pro­ducer Avi Lerner it was announced that Brett Rat­ner would be direct­ing the 2010 Conan remake — the ini­tial state­ment in the Hol­ly­wood Reporter implied that Rat­ner had com­mit­ted him­self to the sequel, how­ever it seems that Rat­ner is still in the final phases of nego­ti­a­tion, accord­ing to the LA Times, with the screen­writ­ers pol­ish­ing the script to incor­po­rate new ideas thrown up in the discussion.

Lerner remains pos­i­tive that Rat­ner is per­fect for the job:

“He has the pas­sion and feel­ing for this project–he even wrote a story about Conan when he was 10 years old. He under­stands the char­ac­ter, he ana­lyzed the script really well. He knows how to make this a really big movie. I like his child­like enthusiasm–he almost sees these movies as won­der­ful toys. What can I say, he’s a nice, lik­able Jew­ish boy.”

Ratner’s involve­ment hinges on “a few obsta­cles,” namely “a bud­get, on how to do the spe­cial effects and exactly where we’d shoot the film.” — Early thoughts point to a stu­dio in Bul­garia and some exte­rior work in China.

But when the LA Times con­tacted Rat­ner things turned a lit­tle sour:

“I am not doing ‘Conan’ now. This is totally pre­ma­ture. For now, ‘Conan’ is only a devel­op­ment deal. I have a deal at Para­mount and I’m doing ‘Bev­erly Hills Cop [4]’ first, no mat­ter what. Avi shouldn’t be telling you or any­one else in the press what I’m doing.”

We’ll have to wait and see how this one develops.

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