“No one ever made a real Conan”: After Arnold Schwarzenegger and before Jason Momoa, another actor played the character, but the film was never released.

Let’s not argue: Conan the Barbarian is the film that introduced heroic fantasy to the general public (and even, to be more specific, the subgenre. sword and sorcery).

To date, no one but John Milius has been able to capture Robert E. The essence and soul of the character world created by Howard, even if the filmmaker largely projected our favorite Arnie’s very personal vision of the myth. Superman.

After Conan the Destroyer and Kalidor, Legend of the Talisman (although Conan’s name could not be used here due to rights issues), the character even had the rights to his own animated series, Conan the Adventurer, which was born seven years after the latter film, from the pen of screenwriter Christy Marx, namely Jem and the Holograms and Writer of GI Joe episodes.

We will also add to this animated series, the so-called Conan and the Young Warriors and consisted of one season of 13 episodes produced in 1994. It did not enjoy the same success and remains unpublished in France. If you add in the remake and other adaptation projects, this time in the series, the world of Conan is already pretty fresh.

Conan Red Nails

And yet… there is a Conan the Barbarian animated film, brutal and intended to be ultra faithful to the original material, which unfortunately remained unfinished. Her name ? Conan Red Nails. Announced in the October 2005 column of The Hollywood Reporter, the project was highly coveted.

Victor Dal Celle was entrusted with this Conan Red Nails Featuring an up-and-coming vocal cast led by Marg Helgenberger (CSI series), Clancy Brown, James Marsden (X-Men) and Mark Hamill, not forgetting the colossal Ron Perlman (Hellboy) and his inimitable voice as Conan.

In a December 2023 interview published on the site Psychic FlossScreenwriter and producer Steve Gold is returning to the project, which he says should be much more faithful to Howard’s work than John Milius was able to do.

“No one has ever made a real Conan movie. With all due respect to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I really admire and would love to work on a Conan project, there has never been a Conan movie or TV series that faithfully adapted the stories. by Robert E. Howard.

red nails It was based on Howard’s last Conan story, considered by many of the writer’s fans to be one of the best ever to appear in the magazine. strange tales in 1936. Howard wrote the last story because he killed himself after some time.

It is in this story that we discover the character of Valeria, the famous warrior woman played by Sandal Bergman in Milius’ classic.

“I wanted our film to be faithful to the source material and our main character. I don’t believe violence should be gratuitous, but for a purpose, with a real focus on its consequences. Even when Conan slays the dragon, after a true epic. Conan respects that beast : One wild creature recognizes another.

A devastating financial crisis

“I think the hardest part of the process for me was doing all the pre-production in about six months.” Comment by Victor Dale Chell in a Mental Floss article. “Designing all the backgrounds, the many, many characters and props was a daunting task. My salvation came from good friends and very talented people who worked with me on all aspects of the design.”

There’s a very brief outline of the animation sequence, which remains in the prototype stage, here…

Although vocal dubbing is already underway, the project has actually been moving forward since its 2005 announcement. After two years, he had made very little progress. And the financial crisis of 2007-2009 had a devastating impact.

“It was an iceberg that nobody could avoid. Like an impregnable brick wall. It hit the market hard.” says Steve Gold. A financial crisis that will leave 8.7 million people out of work in the United States and that has seriously affected Steve Gold’s company Swordplay Entertainment, which is responsible for developing the film. As a result, most studios and distributors It then cut off all non-essential funding to focus on internal project development.

Conan killed Conan

The final blow would be the release of a version of Conan with Jason Momoa in 2011, in which, ironically, the role of the hero’s father was played by Ron Perlman. A very serious financial failure at the international box office, which did not even bring in $65 million on a budget estimated at $90 million at the time.

It is enough to suspend the license for a moment. So much so that the film remains the Cimmerian’s last screen appearance to this day. Fredrik Malmberg, head of Paradox Entertainment, the current owner of Conan the Barbarian, however, is confident that the character will return soon.

As for Steve Gold, he wouldn’t worry about getting back into it one day. “I think Conan fans missed an opportunity to enjoy an epic adventure that was true to Howard’s work. But you never know. We love the character as much as the fans do. Who knows what the future holds?” Given the age of his project Conan Red NailsIn twenty years, of course, we have to start from scratch. or almost. hard…