Lionsgate’s reboot of Conan has been in development for so long, it seems, that when it was first given the green light, the screenplay was written in chalk.
But now it’s moving forward ever so slightly, with the news that said screenplay is set to receive another overhaul from two new writers.
Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain are the new guys brought on board. They’ll be replacing Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, with a brief to create an R-rated origin of Conan flick that will be violent, epic, dark, and budgeted at about $100 million.
“There's no reason there couldn't be a Conan movie every two years,” says Conan producer, Fredrik Malmberg. “He's almost like Batman: He's a dark hero. He's a hard hero. He has to be badass, but we also have to like him.”
Lionsgate is fast-tracking the project – which will ignore the previous Arnie-centric Conan movies, and focus on the stories of creator Robert E. Howard - with a view to getting it into cinemas as soon as possible (by the end of 2009, we’re saying). And, in case you hadn’t guessed, the decision to reboot means that The Governator won’t be coming out of retirement to make an appearance in this.
McCain and Blackman, meanwhile, have another screenplay placed with Lionsgate as well – the action-adventure, Amazon, to which Scarlett Johansson is attached as star and Neal H. Moritz as producer.