New Director tapped for Conan feature film!

According to reports online here, here, and here Director Marcus Nispel, in what Variety calls a move "ending a nine-year development ordeal to reinvent the Robert E. Howard-created barbarian," will now helm the Conan the Barbarian (or whatever they plan to call it) movie project for Nu Image/Millennium/Lionsgate.

Who is Marcus Nispel?

Wired dot com calls him an "master of gory reboots". Reboots? Ah, yes, he's the one responsible for the remakes of Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Haven't seen either movie. Heard one sucked harder than the black hole at galactic center while the other was dull, dreary, and totally unnecessary. Forget which was which. Of course you have to take such comments with a grain of salt these days as remakes almost never compare well to the original movies, even when they're fairly decent flicks in their own right.

Variety reports the remake is set to start filming sometime later this year in Bulgaria and South Africa "with a script by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, whose credits include 'Sahara' and 'Cowboys and Aliens'." Cowboys and Aliens? Never heard of it. And what sort of a vision of Conan can we expect this director to bring?

Again, per Variety, "Nispel said he will blend his childhood imaginings of the character with the influence of the famous Conan illustrations by Frank Frazetta, and the influence of such viscerally violent period films as Mel Gibson's 'Apocalypto'."

Say what? Apocalypto? That plodding, asinine, dull, intense, blood spattered, nudity filled, crazed smack upside the head of a neo-historical epic? This is what the director is citing as an influence? Well, as far as directors go, Mel Gibson is not that bad I suppose. At least Nispel isn't enamored of the works of Uwe Boll. And, like the guy at the MTV blog commented. .

"Say what you will about Mel Gibson and his headline-worthy antics, but “Apocalypto” really could be a perfect model for “Conan.” Bizarre make-up effects, brutal warfare and exotic locales? Sounds like the ideal road map for an epic “Conan” movie to us."

Could be good. Could be bad. Just so long as it finally gets made!

For more on this developing story I direct you to the fine articles at Cinematical, Chud, Geeks of Doom, and of course Variety.

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