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Post by Von K on Oct 2, 2020 19:42:54 GMT -5
There is no way that Malmberg is going to let this be a repeat of Conan 2011. I genuinely believe that he had little creative weight on that film, with his position as Producer merely a courtesy. That seems right to me. Here's the latest from Andre over at Midnight's Edge, who also shares that impression:
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Post by alexander on Oct 3, 2020 3:48:24 GMT -5
I don't believe audiences would run away from Conan because he's an "alpha male". What about Fast & Furious? You have quite a few alpha males there (and several strong women). What about Bond? What about the TV series Spartacus? There was a high level of testosterone there too. I'm really curious about why Amazon killed the project. Did the producer really think her subscribers would not like Conan or was she personnally offended as a woman by the images of scantilly clad women crawling at Conan's feet like we see in the video? Old Bond movie posters had such images (on Her Majesty's secret service, Thunderball). I doubt Barbara Broccoli would accept that nowadays and yet Craig is more macho than Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan (at least it seems to me as I've stopped watching Bond after Craig's second outing)
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 3, 2020 7:31:09 GMT -5
Jennifer Salke is very outspoken about the subject. It’s likely why she concentrated on Wheel of Time instead of Conan and has a female lead for Lord of the Rings. The examples you mentioned show you can have strong male AND female characters. I suppose Conan for her was TOO strong a character so that had to go, plus ‘it was the other guys’ project’ hurt it as well.
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Post by KiramidHead on Oct 3, 2020 8:31:48 GMT -5
And let's not forget that Netflix also makes The Witcher, which ain't exactly "PC".
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Post by theironshadow on Oct 3, 2020 10:30:40 GMT -5
I like to think that the tone of Conan on Netflix would have matched the visceral nature of DeKnight's Spartacus series (he hurriedly pointed out minus the ridiculous amount of bad language and kept sexual content tempered, as that was never Howard) but without cloning the look of Zack Snyder's '300' film, or even Tarsim's 'Immortals'. I'm also keen to know the roster of Directors they might want to hire. I won't hear a bad word said about Neil Marshall, his filmography including Centurion is excellent, and i enjoyed the Solomon Kane film. It shouldn't be an automatic go-to to hire GoT directors, but open the door to franchise film makers who want to give the Cimmerian a filmic feel.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 3, 2020 11:52:19 GMT -5
I think that’s the key word-visceral. Whatever you think of the Milius film, it was visceral to the max. If the series can capture the feel of that, they’ll be all right.
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kele
Wanderer
Posts: 7
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Post by kele on Oct 3, 2020 15:52:18 GMT -5
I don't think audiences have a problem with strong successful independent male (or female) characters. It's the management of the studios that do. And they hire people who hold to their views and that limits the creative possibilities even more. So Conan would have to be dumb (if tall and strong), skinny (if smart), fat (if attractive), short (if macho), emotionally handicapped (if pale), or be half Samoan/Eritrean/Thai (if successful).... Even the 1982 Conan had to be from a massacred village and a slave. A good Conan film needed to be done in the 1960s or 70s and probably have a director like Andrew V McLaglen or Antonio Margheriti to be the closest to source. The executives at Amazon or Netflix would fall into a fetal position and cry out in terror if they watched a movie like this:
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Post by Von K on Oct 3, 2020 17:12:19 GMT -5
I ought to clarify that I don’t agree with all of Andre’s points in his Midnight’s Edge vid that I posted above.
He does make some good points, and I agree that Fredrik Malmberg had only limited ability to influence the 2011 movie.
But I don’t agree with Andre’s criticism of Avi Lerner with regard to Conan 2011. Imho it was the script that was the biggest problem for that movie, along with a complex mix of factors that cannot be laid on the shoulders of any one person. S+S is also a notoriously difficult genre to capture on the big screen. Avi Lerner was one of the key figures behind getting Rambo Last Blood into cinemas, a significant feat in such a difficult contemporary climate for such films.
Also, Benioff and Weiss got a lot of flack for GoT seasons 7 and 8, but they were essentially handed the Herculean task of wrapping up GRRM’s complex, sprawling, multi-character epic, a task which even the original author is so far unable to complete. No one at HBO could have expected George to take this long to finish the series. I don’t blame George either. Expectations ran too high and it all got out of hand.
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Post by Von K on Oct 3, 2020 17:23:08 GMT -5
I think that’s the key word-visceral. Whatever you think of the Milius film, it was visceral to the max. If the series can capture the feel of that, they’ll be all right. As far as I know Milius' Conan 82 is still the most artistically and commercially successful S+S film ever made. Some additional challenges may be how to bring REH’s prose magic and the Lovecraftian/cosmic horror atmosphere and elements to the screen effectively. And now that the Witcher is so popular the Conan series may have to distinguish itself somewhat from that sort of S+S. The Witcher riffs on a lot of Moorcockian tropes, and Moorcock reversed a lot of Howardian tropes. Neil Marshall’s style may suit a big budget TV show. I'd like to see what kind of pitch he'd make to the producers.
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Post by mindboggled on Oct 4, 2020 0:26:01 GMT -5
With tv shows out there like GOT, Spartacus, Vikings and The Witcher-there is no good reason for a Conan adaption be tempered.
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Post by zarono on Oct 4, 2020 9:34:12 GMT -5
I'm looking forward to seeing this, I'll start watching it because it's Conan (as I think many other fans will) but if they make an attempt to adapt some of REH's original stories it will certainly hold my interest for multiple seasons. I don't have any worries it might make Conan soft or somehow too pg, they know the fan base and the speculative demographics based on that. Might be a little less female nudity but the 1970's 4 color comics adapted the stories within the confines of the comics code and they were still highly enjoyable. What I really want to see is the weirdness and wonder of the Hyborian Age brought to life in an interesting way, as a Howard fan I see Conan's world is as important as the character himself.
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Post by almuric on Oct 4, 2020 16:19:29 GMT -5
Indeed. I'd advise the production staff to, in addition to reading all Conan stories and the Hyborian Age essay, to watch historical epics, Spaghetti Westerns and horror movies to get the right vibe for this.
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Post by Char-Vell on Oct 5, 2020 11:32:20 GMT -5
I'll offer my services as executive source material compliance consultant for a mere 3k per episode.
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Post by johnnypt on Oct 8, 2020 12:38:26 GMT -5
If you want a good laugh, have a look at this CBR article: www.cbr.com/netflix-conan-the-adventurer-series/You'd think it was a parody, but nope, someone really thought about this. It reminded me of the MST3K skit when Tom Servo played the new sensitive secret agent where he worries about the bad guy invading his boundaries and worries the girl is too co-dependent. Note to Netflix, if you need a guidebook of what NOT to do, well...
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Post by alexander on Oct 8, 2020 13:29:56 GMT -5
lol I liked the "Instead of being a child slave with gladiator roots...". Should we tell them that's Milius/Stone Conan not REH's?
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