He might be a muscle-bound hero that slays his enemies and occasionally listens to the lamentation of their women, but Conan The Barbarian has had a tough time of it in the ol’ Hollywood development wasteland.
After seven fruitless years sheltering in the Warners cave, being approached by such film mystics as the Wachowski brothers and Robert Rodriguez, Conan set fourth again into the wilderness, looking for the almighty deal that would finally see him return triumphantly to the screen.
Which is a very overblown way of saying that Fredrik Malmberg, the owner of the rights to Robert E Howard’s conqueror has sold them to Millennium Films after an extensive bidding war that included a brief flirtation with New Line.
Millennium didn’t announce any writers, directors or stars attached to its vision of Conan, but it does have big plans: “While it's a rich deal for us, we believe in the brand and that this will lead to multiple pictures," the company’s Joe Gatta told Variety . They’d better hope so – the rights to the stories come with a pricey $1 million a year tag and have proved to be a tough cinematic nut to crack since Arnie put away the leather codpiece.
Still, the company hopes to be shooting its first movie by next spring, and pledges to be truer to Howard’s books than the Schwarzenegger movies. Good luck…
Source: ( Variety )
