39 replies to this topic

[ZackDavisson]

"Dark days?" Please.

+1

People seem to have really short memories, or just weren't there. Right now, you can get all of Howard's Conan, and most of his other stories, in unedited, beautiful volumes.

If anything, this is a Golden Age.

And I second the hriing of Mark to oversee that Conan TV series. I would LOVE to watch that.

[Mark Finn]

Thank you for the vote of confidence. I don't think, though, that I'm saying anything that Paradox doesn't already know, or even perhaps agree with. It's getting Hollywood to listen that's the eternal problem. As long as the 28 year old film executive thinks he is the smartest person in the room, it's going to be really difficult to get anything past the old, outmoded ways of thinking.

[Doug]

No it isn't.

No they didn't.

No it's not.

As someone who lived through the 80s and 90s, you'd have to do much much more to the Conan brand to "poison the well" and "Kill the goose."

If a Saturday morning cartoon and a lamentable Xena-styled live action syndicated series couldn't kill Conan's popularity, then there is no way in Hell that the Momoa film did even a fraction of the damage to the brand.

"Dark days?" Please.

AGREED.

I second that!

Take care.
Doug

[Kortoso]

Dark days, no. But life could be brighter.
I will celebrate when I see The Hour of the Dragon serialized on HBO.
Until then my mead horn remains unlifted.

[ZackDavisson]

Which is, to me, a strange attitude to take Kortoso.

To me, Conan IS Robert E. Howard's books. Having those available, in the best editions I have ever seen, complete and unedited and affordable (Sorry Wandering Star. You made beautiful books but at those prices you might as well have printed them on solid gold plates and bound in unicorn hide... ) is far more important than any live-action adaptation.

Because, you know, for most of my life they weren't available. I had to order foreign books from overseas to get unedited Howard because there were no American editions.

Would I love a cool Conan flick or TV show? Sure. I dig the Conan comics too, even though they suck some times.

But that is all bonus material. Nice but not necessary. So long as I got my Howard books, I am a happy man.

[RJMooreII]

You can get practically everything for free if you just load the Gutenberg html files into Calibre and make Epubs or something of them. Between the E-books I've bought and the mass of public domain published material I have an almost-complete collection of Howard and Lovecraft for something like a few dollars, and it fits in my pocket!

If only an E-book of Lovecraft and Howards' correspondence with one another were available.

Back on topic, I basically think Hollywood is completely screwed up by economic meddling and will never be worth anything, so I didn't even see the Momoa film and don't intend to. Everything good is on cable; more money = bigger turds.

Edited by RJMooreII, 25 June 2012 - 09:58 AM.

[deuce]

To me, Conan IS Robert E. Howard's books. Having those available, in the best editions I have ever seen, complete and unedited and affordable (Sorry Wandering Star. You made beautiful books but at those prices you might as well have printed them on solid gold plates and bound in unicorn hide... ) is far more important than any live-action adaptation.

Because, you know, for most of my life they weren't available. I had to order foreign books from overseas to get unedited Howard because there were no American editions.

But that is all bonus material. Nice but not necessary. So long as I got my Howard books, I am a happy man.

Right on, Zack. Personally, whether they put REH on the big or small screen means very little. Howard's WORDS are what matter to me.

[Fierro]

To me, Conan IS Robert E. Howard's books. Having those available, in the best editions I have ever seen, complete and unedited and affordable (Sorry Wandering Star. You made beautiful books but at those prices you might as well have printed them on solid gold plates and bound in unicorn hide... ) is far more important than any live-action adaptation.

Because, you know, for most of my life they weren't available. I had to order foreign books from overseas to get unedited Howard because there were no American editions.

But that is all bonus material. Nice but not necessary. So long as I got my Howard books, I am a happy man.

Right on, Zack. Personally, whether they put REH on the big or small screen means very little. Howard's WORDS are what matter to me.

And another amen! I understand the desire to see favorite books on film. If that Italian consortium does a good job with The Religion, I'll be watching. And if Hour of the Dragon is serialized on HBO I'll watch that (though you realize it will be considered a Game of Thrones rip-off). But, as Deuce said, it matters little. The greatness of REH (and the reason I loved The Religion so) is that the characters and story are more vivid in my head than they could ever be on screen, no matter how outstanding the production. Nothing could enhance the experience of those reads; my mead cup is full.

Edited by Fierro, 25 June 2012 - 03:54 PM.

[ZackDavisson]

I would say my mead up is full, but I hate mead ... way too sweet.

So my whisky glass is full. Hopefully a nice Islay malt.

[RJMooreII]

I would say my mead up is full, but I hate mead ... way too sweet.

So my whisky glass is full. Hopefully a nice Islay malt.

Honey mead is disgusting, lol.

[cromsguts]

Single Malt Highland Laddie!

[monk]

...If that Italian consortium does a good job with The Religion, I'll be watching. ..

more info please, deuce turned me on to that book last year and i didn't put it down once it got picked up.

oh and yes Zack! good post.

i guess though it is such a ripe concept, such awesome stories, that one must wonder how it has been sooooooo badly manhandled on film...

[cimerians]

I have to agree with a series although I highly doubt a cable company would want it unless its done in some "new" unique way.

Sometimes all it takes is a title change. Like naming the series Hyboria or Swords and Thrones
and then featuring Conan in it. (Kind of like Smallville). I think the name Conan might scare them or something. One things for sure, Howards stories are dark and violent. And if another movie were to be made I would at least enjoy it if it was DarkKnight-like.

I also think they may need to get a smart younger guy who's a fan kind of like what Joss Whedon did for Avengers or even Marc Webb. (Yeah I actually enjoyed ASM). A guy who's done ORIGINAL stuff. Even someone who just makes cool shows. Someone who understands the Howard stories and has a library of them in his home.

Anyway just my two cents.

(I've almost made up my mind it'll never happen)

Edited by cimerians, 12 July 2012 - 09:41 PM.

[ConquerorWyrm]

I just long for one Conan film to actually be a Conan film, not a Half Naked Barbarian Guy film. As of yet, there hasn't been a Conan film made. The revenge of a dead father? That is nowhere in Howard's writing. The mish-mash of different elements picked from different stories? Terrible. Conan always depicted as a half ignorant loin-cloth clad oaf? That is a shame. I think of Red Nails and the experienced adventurer therein...that Conan has never appeared on film. As for the origin story? The most that is ever referenced in Howard's tales is Conan mentioning how he stormed a city (sorry, typing late at night with my mind half asleep so I fail to recall the Aquilonian town) with his father and brothers. Just one Conan tale written to the specs, to the word that Howard wrote. There are several stories that can stand alone without any input from other tales, without that bastardization which has marked and mocked the films that have come before.

[Waldgeist]

The biggest potential for another film or a tv series for me though is not in the character. Conan is a great and interesting character, but he has been copied by other modern heroes time and again and people are familiar with the blue print of the character by now. If they spin another film, or a tv-series just on the character and it's unique nature, they will fail again. (not there are myriads of other reason for the failure of the last Conan movie beyond the focus on the character - that was in addition also misrepresented...)

People want new experiences. That's why Game of Thrones is so successful. It's not the newest story, it's not even very fresh. It's classic political drama, but wrapped in a very fresh, new and enticing layer of a mystical dark-fantasy world... with a good chunk of naked flesh to sign it off.

Spartacus is the same. Very well known stories and character blue-prints, but wrapped in a specific experience.

The world Howard created to tell Conan stories is the bigger seller than the character. It hasn't been done. It would feel and look fresh and new, IF done right and just like GoT or Spartacus with a specific style, that captures the difference of the world. In addition "one hero stories" are not nearly as capturing to todays audience as they were in the 80's and 90's. Most modern tv series are about a group of people, so they have different angles to tell the story from, to have filler episodes and the like.

I think to have a successful, modern representation of the REH Conan stories would therefore mean, that they need to bring across the difference of the Hyborian Age visually and presentation wise (just like Age of Conan did and besides all the issues, everyone LOVES the representation, the feel of the world) and they need to find reappearing characters in the stories or construct them (a bit like the first run of the Dark Horse Comics did and quite successfully too). As someone pointed out (the smallville example), the series would need to have the freedom for a filler episode that doesn't even have Conan in it.

That's at least what I concluded over the last couple of years and after talking to many non-REH fans about the new Conan movie and the franchise in general.

Cheers,
Waldgeist

Edited by Waldgeist, 10 September 2012 - 12:37 PM.

[Lunatic]

People want new experiences. That's why Game of Thrones is so successful. It's not the newest story, it's not even very fresh. It's classic political drama, but wrapped in a very fresh, new and enticing layer of a mystical dark-fantasy world... with a good chunk of naked flesh to sign it off.

Spartacus is the same. Very well known stories and character blue-prints, but wrapped in a specific experience.


I agree that Hyboria is really interesting but in these two examples the violence and the nakedness is the new expirience. But wrapped in drama.

[Taranaich]

The world Howard created to tell Conan stories is the bigger seller than the character. It hasn't been done. It would feel and look fresh and new, IF done right and just like GoT or Spartacus with a specific style, that captures the difference of the world. In addition "one hero stories" are not nearly as capturing to todays audience as they were in the 80's and 90's. Most modern tv series are about a group of people, so they have different angles to tell the story from, to have filler episodes and the like.

I think to have a successful, modern representation of the REH Conan stories would therefore mean, that they need to bring across the difference of the Hyborian Age visually and presentation wise (just like Age of Conan did and besides all the issues, everyone LOVES the representation, the feel of the world) and they need to find reappearing characters in the stories or construct them (a bit like the first run of the Dark Horse Comics did and quite successfully too). As someone pointed out (the smallville example), the series would need to have the freedom for a filler episode that doesn't even have Conan in it.

Absolutely, and I think Howard himself was going in that direction. Case in point, not only did he start to introduce co-protagonists sharing the story with Conan (Balthus, Valeria, etc), he even wrote a Conan story in which Conan himself doesn't actually appear ("Wolves Beyond the Border"). Evidently Howard felt there was much more to the Hyborian Age than being just background for Conan.

That's what Dark Horse had been doing right: taking a story, and setting a larger story arc around it. Sure, the quality of those arcs varies, and I certainly don't agree with many of their decisions, but the formula is solid. All you'd have to do for a Conan TV show is take a period of Conan's life - say, the thief period - take the relevant stories, and flesh them out. Game of Thrones had ten episodes per season: even if we do three Howard stories per season, that still leaves seven episodes to weave a tapestry to include the characters in other episodes.

[Ironhand]

Individual Conan stories could be expanded into story arcs, especially by doing business with the co-protgagonists, and also the villainous antagonists. (Notice how closely we are following the story of Geoffrey, the twerp we love to hate)

Edited by Ironhand, 11 September 2012 - 08:13 AM.

[Waldgeist]

True taranaich. Now that I think about it, there are a couple of stories where Conan felt a bit of a "side character" to me in that he is not in every "big scene" and sometimes his actions are only talked about by others (A Witch Shall be Born for example). Since a story like AWSbB is so epic in scale and takes place over a longer period of time, they could easily write 3-4 episodes of a 40 minute series about it and in several of it, Conan would not even appear. But I think at this point... there is not the money, nor the interest available to invest so much into a poisoned franchise. No matter we see the potential, after the last Conan movie it is clear, how much effort, knee jerks and compromises Paradox had to endure and accept to get this "cherished classic" made.

[TiriusBanner]

Well, everything's possible.
Five years ago I never would've put my money on a chance that "A Game Of Thrones" would actually be made, despite the fact that HBO bought the rights to the series. But guess what, now it's the highest-grossing show on TV.

I heard rumors of Momoa writing a script for the next Conan movie himself, as well as rumors that he doesn't even want to touch Conan with a 10 foot pole. At this point, it's all just speculation...

But I am nevertheless not very optimistic about a new Conan movie, or a TV series for that matter. Here's why...

First of all, Conan is not nearly as popular as it was in the '80s and '90s. And that's a fact. Yes, it's an immortal character, and has an army of fans. But back in those days Conan was a household name. Everybody loved him, even my mom.
Nowadays, it's all about superheroes and movies that play like cartoons (Avengers, Iron Man, etc.). They tried that stuff with Momoa's Conan and it flopped big time. You just can't turn Conan into a cartoon (and that's exactly what they did, in my opinion) and hope to resurrect the series. Fans will hate it, and young kids will not even pay attention to it because they're too busy meme-ing the s*** out of "The Avengers" on 9gag.

It doesn't matter what we think of Momoa's Conan. The movie flopped so hard it barely made back it's budget. It damaged careers of everyone involved, maybe even destroyed them. No one in his right mind would touch a Conan movie project after that. And before anyone starts saying "Sure, the movie didn't make a lot of money, but..." But nothing! Money is the only reason they make movies in the first place. They're not making it so they could get thumbs up from us, no matter how sophisticated our taste might be.

I'd love to see a Conan movie done right, naturally, but the only hope for Conan I see is in a form of a TV series. But even there lies a danger that people might just see it as a "Spartacus" and "Game Of Thrones" rip-off.

Unless they hire Mark Finn and force feed him cough medications, eh? Then we might have an awesome Conan adaptation we all deserve.