Before going “home” for Christmas, I picked up a few magazines, including Creative Screenwriting Magazine — which had more than a few interesting articles:
By Crom, Conan Lives Again!
Word is, John Milius’s King Conan script is exactly what you’d expect from Milius: lots of battles, loppings, and meditations on the ways of the aging warrior. But while Warner Bros waits for the Wachowski brothers to shout “Action!” on that epic, Swordplay Entertainment, Inc. has scooped up the rights to create three feature-length animated Conan direct-to-video films, all to be written and produced by Swordplay’s Steve Gold. “This is the project I’ve always wanted,” Gold enthused to Buzz. “Conan is the James Bond of fantasy, only better.” Gold started his writing life as Hal Ashby’s writing assistant, adapting properties by William Gibson and Michael Moorcock before becoming the sworn protector of novelist Robert E. Howard’s vision of the barbarian. “This is going to be the real Conan, very faithful to the source material,” said Gold. “We’re going to give the audience the Conan they’ve been waiting for, a Conan most people have never had a chance to see.”
Milus’s script sounds excellent, of course — even though the first Conan script, also by Milius, wasn’t true to Howard’s Conan stories, it was true to Howard’s Conan ethos — but I don’t know if I would have chosen the Wachowski brothers to direct. Greg’s Previews points out that Arnold is no longer free to play the role, now that he’s the Governator. Milius has suggested Paul Michael Levesque (aka Triple H).
As for the direct-to-video animated movies — by Crom, Steve Gold is saying all the things I want to hear: Conan is the James Bond of fantasy, only better. This is going to be the real Conan, very faithful to the source material. Of course, there’s something a bit contradictory — in a Yogi Berra kind of way — about his last statement: We’re going to give the audience the Conan they’ve been waiting for, a Conan most people have never had a chance to see.