Solomon Kane is coming to theaters:
While Robert E. Howard’s most famous literary creation is the warrior-king Conan, who debuted in WEIRD TALES back in 1932, the pulp-fiction master had more than one great anti-hero in his arsenal. An earlier WEIRD TALES series starred Solomon Kane, a Puritan warrior who traveled the globe battling the evils of the 16th century with sword, knife, and pistol. In 2008, Kane will get his own Hollywood blockbuster starring James Purefoy (Rome, A Knight’s Tale) — and director Michael J. Bassett has just released the first look at the movie’s teaser poster.
I like James Purefoy as Mark Anthony in Rome, but I can’t say he would have been my first choice to play the driven Puritan.
I was expecting someone tall, thin, and angular — almost gaunt.
“Wolf-lean” is the term, I believe, from the original stories.
Here’s how the Solomon Kane role-playing game artist depicts him — in action, surrounded by teeming hordes of ghouls:
The writer-director, Michael Bassett, describes what he’s doing in this video — which is to start off a trilogy with Solomon Kane’s origin, which is never quite spelled out in Robert E. Howard’s original stores:
Naturally I recommend picking up the original works, which have been collected in The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane.