OH CROM DAMN IT.

CROM DAMN IT ALL.

Universal Pictures has made a deal for The Legend Of Conan, an action film that will star Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his signature roles as Robert E. Howard’s mythic barbarian. The deal brings Conan and Schwarzenegger back to Universal, which released the first film that launched Schwarzenegger’s movie career back in 1982. Universal has world rights on the film.

The film will be produced by Fredrik Malmberg and Chris Morgan. Malmberg is CEO of Paradox Entertainment, which holds the rights to Conan. Morgan is the Universal-based writer and producer whose credits include the last four Fast and the Furious films, along with Wanted and 47 Ronin. Morgan has hatched the story and might write the script. The caveat is that the studio wants The Legend of Conan for summer 2014, and Morgan might not be finished writing the seventh Fast and Furious installment by then. If that happens he will be a very active producer, because this is Morgan’s dream project.

Schwarzenegger starred in two Conan films before moving on to Terminator and other blockbusters as he became the world’s biggest action star. Paradox was involved in a 2011 reboot at Millennium Films that starred Jason Momoa and misfired. Paradox’s Malmberg, who moved the project away from Warner Bros after seven years of development with big name filmmakers because the project was moving too slowly, feels that this is the version of the film that he and everybody else always wanted to see on the screen but couldn’t while Schwarzenegger was Governor of California.

“The original ended with Arnold on the throne as a seasoned warrior, and this is the take of the film we will make,” Malmberg told me. “It’s that Nordic Viking mythic guy who has played the role of king, warrior, soldier and mercenary, and who has bedded more women than anyone, nearing the last cycle of his life. He knows he’ll be going to Valhalla, and wants to go out with a good battle.”

There are no plans for Momoa to return. Morgan said that in his mind, The Legend of Conan not only skips over that film, but also the 1984 sequel that Schwarzenegger starred in. The direct link is to the original, which was directed by John Milius from a script that he wrote with Oliver Stone. That was a testosterone-laced exploration of Howard’s mythology of a child sold into slavery who grows into manhood seeking vengeance against the warlord who slaughtered his family and his village.

“After the original seminal movie, all that came after looked silly to me,” Morgan said. “Robert E. Howard’s mythology and some great philosophy from Nietzsche to Atilla the Hun was layered in the original film. People say, he didn’t speak for the first 20 minutes of the film, but that was calculated in depicting this man who takes control of life with his own hand. This movie picks up Conan where Arnold is now in his life, and we will be able to use the fact that he has aged in this story. I love the property of Conan so much that I wouldn’t touch it unless we came up with something worthy. We think this is a worthy successor to the original film. Think of this as Conan’s Unforgiven.”

Let's go through stages of grief of a Howard fan - not representative of all Howard fans, of course, just one in particular. I'll approximate it through the use of video clips. Then I'll try and give a more level-headed commentary. Emphasis on try. I am so crotchety right now.

Red Sonja gets back to the mail byrnie

So says Eric Trautmann, who's taking over Red Sonja.

Well technically he says "mail tunic," but he's clearly referring to the original iteration of Red Sonja in the early days of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian.

Conan the Barbarian can't be ALL bad...

Google Alerts has pointed me to this delightful little blog.

Sure, it's all Conan the Barbarian stuff, but I still find something vaguely attractive about the film's art direction, even if it's basically a soup of Biblical, Roman and Viking epics. I particularly like the Valerias.

It put me in mind of that webcomic I'd been working on. I have, literally, dozens of ideas for strips & panels. Most of them aren't so much funny, so much as meant to be illustrative. I suppose the word would be satirical, but... well, that isn't quite right either.

An example would be Literary Conan vs Cinematic Conan, where'd I show the differences between the two, as the old theatre/film maxim goes. One strip would be about Conan's childhood: Literary Conan would be hunting wild beasts, felling hawks on the wing, fighting Vanir and such, while Cinematic Conan would be picking wild blueberries, ice-fishing, and listening to his daddy talking about Crom. Then another might have one focusing on lovers (LitCo surrounded by the likes of Belit, Valeria, the Queens and whatnot, CinCo with the whore, witch and Valeria's party impersonator), feats of strength/endurance/swordplay, that sort of thing.

Suffice to say, Cinematic Conan never really comes off well.