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.