With the relative success of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, especially after its rocky start, and Conan the Barbarian (2011) on the way, it would seem a ripe opportunity to once again expand the Conan license into video games. The last Conan game, Nihilistic’s Conan, was released in 2007 to generally favourable reviews, albeit without much commercial success. Paradox are seeking to exploit the buzz about the new film to launch a new Conan game, as revealed at Gamespot.

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You may remember rumours from a while back, that the very talented Djimon Honsou was eager to portray Thulsa Doom in a Conan the Barbarian spinoff. After a lot of hubbubabub, nothing seemed to come of it, but Honsou is still enthusiastic. What’s more, it appears he has the rights and a finished script:

SheKnows: Do you have a pet project-script in a drawer somewhere that you would love to get produced some day?

Djimon Hounsou: It’s true I do have a piece that is dear to me called Thulsa Doom, a character that appeared in the original Conan the Barbarian film and was played by James Earl Jones. That character is a comic book in itself and they’ve never exploited it. So, I bought the rights and developed it. We’ve got a finished script which I’m reading now and we’re passing it around.

Editorial

Making a Thulsa Doom film so close to a new Conan film that has little to nothing to do with the 1982 film is anathema to me, and likely to just cause even more confusion with the general public. There’s already plenty of that with the Red Sonja situation, with some thinking Rose McGowan’s role as Marique in Conan the Barbarian (2011) precludes her taking the role. Still, there’s no denying Milius and Stone’s character was one of the most memorable and beloved aspects of the film in the popular consciousness – no doubt due to James Earl Jones’ commanding performance, and his delivery of Milius’ most quotable lines. Of course guys like me are going to gnash our teeth about this modern counterpart to the original skull-headed, undead nemesis of Kull continuing to overshadow Howard’s creation, but hey, even I liked Thulsa Doom.

More worrisome is if this Thulsa Doom ends up anything like the recent Dynamite comic series, where Arvid Nelson ambitiously attempts to reconcile both Howard and Conan the Barbarian’s Thulsa Doom. It… didn’t work. At all. Frankly, it’s completely impossible without directly contradicting or dismissing either Howard’s or Conan the Barbarian’s events, and then it isn’t much of a reconciliation. Mitra bless him for trying, though.

Even if the film does get off the ground, it seems unlikely Thulsa Doom won’t be out for a while: that would probably be for the best. That way, it wouldn’t confuse the issue. Then again, Hollywood has a lot of bizarre projects going on: a third Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, another Spider-Man reboot, and a sequel to the original Battlestar Galactica among them. A Conan the Barbarian spin-off featuring a character from a previous film after another reboot based on neither the original stories nor the aforementioned film is just about complicated enough for Hollywood to manage, I guess.

As a break from the positively blinding flurry of official Conan movie news, I’d like to take this opportunity to promote another Conan film that may be of interest to our readers.

Ever since the official casting sheet was announced, Robert E. Howard fans everywhere have been dismayed at the direction of the upcoming film. Sure, for all we know it may well be an excellent and successful film when considered purely on cinematic merits, and in the end, that’s all that matters in the grand scheme of the film industry. All the same, though, considering Conan has survived as a pop-culture juggernaut for close to 80 years, and Howard’s original stories are finally being recognized for their literary merits, it seems a shame that none of those trailblazing yarns are actually being brought to the big screen. With Conan the Barbarian, it could at least be argued that the film made up for its lack of fidelity with cinematic power and broad philosophy, but ever since Conan the Destroyer, Howard “adaptations” into visual media has steadily descended into deeper and darker circles of the Inferno. What could Howard fans do but sigh, and hope that some of the enthusiastic cinemagoers’ interest in the creator of Conan led them to discover the Texan genius and his works?

Then, back in the 1980s, little could really be done. However, now we live in the age of the Internet, where communication with fans from across the world is just a click away. High quality filming equipment is within the budget of the amateur filmmaker. If it were not a logical fallacy to suggest “well why don’t you make your own Conan movie, smart guy,” one could answer it with a film of their own. One such filmmaker is Douglas Sunlin, who is tired of Hollywood exerting their executive meddling in established literary properties which have already proven the test of time, and decided “well, maybe I will make my own Conan movie.”

Enter Robert E. Howard’s The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.

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(The following is a special message from none other than Mark Finn, author of “Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard,” who is one of the top authorities on Robert E. Howard.  It will be proliferated on various websites as a measure to increase awareness on Howard, Howard scholarship and newcomers to the world of Robert E. Howard.  I encourage all who read this to forward it to anyone and everyone who needs to read it. I realise this is not directly related to the Conan movie, but since it is related to Robert E. Howard, and I think it’s a very important document, I’m making a special exception. Click on “Read More” for more details on the Manifesto.)

Why a New Manifesto?

In the past twelve months, I’ve seen several rounds of speculation from various bloggers lately, two of which were the equivalent of Internet train wreaks that ended rather badly, despite everyone’s avowed intentions. In the interest of using the Internet as an actual research tool, I have written this manifesto on behalf of the fans and interested parties in the life and works of Robert E. Howard, as a guide to the person or persons who are new to Howard studies, or perhaps would like to write an article, essay, or blog post about him. If you’d like to delve deeper into the history and current state of Howard studies, and get some advice for participating in the debate, click on the link at the end of this Manifesto.

A New Robert E. Howard Manifesto

I am a fan of Robert E. Howard, the Texas author who created a multitude of unique characters, wrote original and inventive fiction, defined the genre of epic fantasy as we understand it, and inspired me to become a professional writer. There are tens of thousands of other fans just like myself. As fans of Robert E. Howard and his works, we are interested in reading more about our favorite author. We are interested in sharing and exchanging new ideas about his life and work, and we actively seek out these new ideas online, in print, and elsewhere.

What we do not want to see are semi-uninformed retreads of the same discussions that were in vogue circa 1984. The field of Howard Studies is alive and well, with new discoveries and voices appearing all the time.  Interest in the author is high and remains so. If you have a thought or an opinion, even a controversial or untested one, and want to share it with the world at large, we encourage that you do so.

We expect responsibility and accountability on your part. We are not interested in your grand pronouncement on a subject which has yet to be settled by people who have spent decades studying the issue at hand. We expect you to do your homework. There are a number of websites and literally stacks of new books that likely cover or answer most of your questions regarding Robert E. Howard. To not utilize those sources when doing your research smacks of willful ignorance and will not be tolerated by the fans of Robert E. Howard.

If you want to write a review about how much you didn’t like Kull: Exile of Atlantis, have at it. Take it apart for any and all textual reasons you choose to invoke. We may not agree because Howard’s work isn’t for everyone, and we understand that. But the minute you start bringing Robert E. Howard’s life story into your Kull review, it will garner a much more careful reading, and if you don’t have your facts straight, or your opinions backed up by same, then we will call you on it.

The online Robert E. Howard fanbase calls itself the “Shield Wall.” Some writers who have been on the business end of the Shield Wall’s attacks have accused us of being bullies and overly-obsessed for the protective stance we take. While it is not our intention to bully anyone, and while we may get a little carried away on occasion, let me be very clear here as to why this is so: Robert E. Howard has not had a voice for 75 years now. For four decades after his death, he had very few advocates who would defend him against the libel and slander of those who stood to profit from his work. He has been misunderstood and misrepresented for years. The Shield Wall’s goal has been to stop in its entirety the kind of character assassination employed by L. Sprague de Camp and others who would adopt his methodology.

Consider this a challenge to survey the amount of work that has been done in Howard Studies in the last ten years alone and then try to come up with your own take on a topic or angle of discussion that has not been beaten to death. Do not make the mistake that so many others have made; just because Robert E. Howard isn’t considered a “classic” author by the literary establishment that you can beat his literary reputation (or his personal life) like a rented mule and you will not get kicked for your efforts.

We expect you to accord Robert E. Howard the same respect as any other 20^th century American author with continued and perennial popularity. No more back handed compliments. No more snide insinuations. No more rampant and irresponsible speculation with no basis of fact or evidence to bolster it. And for God’s Sake, no more “oedipal complex” crap, either. Those theories are thirty years out of date, and we are sick and tired of seeing it. Give us something new, or keep your parochial and backwards thinking to yourself.

Mark Finn

Author of Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard

And Commander of the Texas Shield Wall

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Earlier in the week, Waldgeist posted on the upcoming snippet and exclusive photo of Jason Momoa’s Conan in the August 2010 issue of Empire. I got the issue today: in addition with apparently conclusive confirmation of Conan’s presence at Comic-Con, there are a few hints of what to expect at San Diego.

Marcus Nispel’s Conan arrives at Comic-Con with something to prove. Fans of Robert E. Howard’s stories have thus far been skeptical about the decidedly non-Howard script (by multiple authors, Sahara writers Josh Oppenheimer and Thomas Dean Donnelly chief among them), and Nispel’s CV of Platinum Dunes horror remakes and flashily muddled Vikings-versus-Native American epic Pathfinder has done little to inspire confidence.

However, Nispel claims that Conan is a lifelong dream project, and with him at the helm we’re at least assured terrific visuals. Fears of a watered-down fantasy-adventure tone have also been laid to rest by producer Joe Gatta, who assured Empire that the Cimmerian barbarian is aiming his axe squarely at a visceral R rating.

Stargate: Atlantis’ Jason Momoa has taken the title role, boasting a considerably more athletic physique than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic bodybuilding form: this Conan is built for speed. Avatar’s big, bad Stephen Lang is the villainous warlord Khalar Zym; Rachel Nichols is love interest Tamara; Ron Perlman (replacing Mickey Rourke at short notice) is Conan’s dad, Corin; and Rose McGowan is on hand as Marique the Witch.

Conan’s Con presence will be decidedly multimedia,, as the crew from the online PC game Age of Conan will be attending in force, and Dark Horse will be handing out exclusive comics. Plus, “We might have one or two stars making a little appearance,” Conan Properties CEO Fredrik Malmberg reveals, “and we might be able to show some footage. It’s all about what (distributor) Lionsgate allow us to do!”

So overall, it’s fairly optimistic, but commendably well-grounded, especially in addressing the most pertinent fears Nispel and company have to deal with. It certainly appears that the Conan movie will be making a substantial appearance at Comic-Con, and the idea of guests and even advanced footage will hopefully give us a further idea of how the film’s shaping up. REH Forumer Lord Greystoke provides scans of the exclusive images, the largest of which I’ve tried to clean up a bit, though due to the nature of the scan, Momoa’s right half is quite a bit skinnier than it should be. The second is a smaller picture of Conan on horseback: it’s good to know Momoa has overcome his fear of horse riding.

In related news, Mark Finn, REH scholar and author of Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, the definitive Robert E. Howard biography, will be moderating a panel at Comic-Con on – what else? – Robert E. Howard in the comics:

Ladies and Gents,

Is anyone else going to San Diego Comic-Con this year? I’ll be onhand, pressing the flesh, and as of right now, moderating a panel on Saturday. What’s the panel, you ask?

Saturday July 24
Robert E. Howard in Comics: Then. Now. Always.:
3:30-4:30
Room 24ABC
Robert E. Howard is seen as the grandfather of the sword and sorcery fiction genre. He’s created such classic characters as Kull the Conqueror, Red Sonya, and Conan the Barbarian that have lived in comics for more than 40 years! Explore worlds of magic, bravery, and savage revenge as this panel delves in to Robert E. Howard’s timeless fiction in comics of the past, present and future.

This was brainstormed by a buddy of mine from Boom! Studios, and it’s going to be a multicompany panel. If any of you are attending this year, I thought this would be a good place for a meet-up. It would be nice to meet you (well, some of you…) face-to-face and shake your hand after the panel. Does this sound like a plan for anyone? If you’re attending, please reply below so we can get an idea of who we’re looking for.

Mark Finn, one of the most vigorous critics of the upcoming Conan film, in the same building as its first major marketing push… It’ll be interesting, to say the least!

UPDATE: Sadly, it looks like the REH Panel won’t be taking place at Comic-Con, due to schedule conflicts and other such bureaucratic mummery.  Fail, Comic-Con.

Funcom’s MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures steps into the next cycle and on the 11th of May they will release the expansion Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer. Today they have released the epic launch trailer and I thought I had to share it with you, because not only am I employed by Funcom as the German Community Manager, but I am also a vivid fan of Conan and REH.

• Launchtrailer in HD
• Launchtrailer in SD

Don’t kill me for going Offtopic, but I just love the trailer, Conan’s voice in the beginning, that we used parts of the Phoenix on the Sword dialogue and the music. After all I am still a Conan fanboy

Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, created many awe inspiring heroes and one of them is Solomon Kane.

As it is with all independent movie productions, after the struggle of bringing them to live, after the producers convinced the investors of their vision, they have to make the film. Very often that happens in much tighter fashion, with less money, less luxuries than the average Hollywood production. Those are the guys, that put in their heart and their soul and quite often their own private money, some of them putting their private money at risk, to realize a dream.

Solomon Kane has been adopted by many countries around europe, as the pricetag to release a movie in europe is much lower and so smaller movies or independent movies are picked much more often for a cinema release, than in bigger countries, with bigger audiences like the United States. Now that the puritan has started to take over Europe, the american distributors are still not fully convinced, they want to give Solomon Kane a wide release with proper large ad-campaign and NOW it’s your turn to help the puritan.

Help Solomon Kane to make it to the United States, Canada or wherever you live by DEMANDING IT! This has helped other independent movies like Paranormal Activity and we fans of the puritans are clearly not less passionate. So let’s create a virtual boat for Solomon Kane, so he can sail over to the new world and smash the demons of the USA.

View all Solomon Kane tour dates

On this day 104 years ago, Robert E. Howard, a writer blessed with a magnificent talent, was born in Peaster, Texas. He was the only child of Dr. Isaac Mordecai Howard, a traveling physician, and Hester Jane Ervin Howard, a caring and loving mother who would play an important role in Howard’s future.

Young Robert’s interest in writing and poetry was from the beginning nurtured in large part by his mother, who shared with her son a great passion for poetry and literature. Hester would encourage the boy to read a wide variety of literature. In the years that followed, she would offer both praise and support when Robert began writing his own stories and poems.

In school, he was a polite if somewhat reserved pupil, chafing with boredom and taking scant interest in the dry, repetitive lessons ladled out by his teachers. Robert’s educational strategy was to do just well enough to satisfy his instructors with the least effort possible. Here his passion for freedom first surfaced and took possession of him. He developed a disdain for the discipline and mundane jobs forced upon him by others. He wanted to be his own master. Over the years, he worked at a variety of jobs, but routine labor distressed him. It was not the hard work he detested, but rather the fact that others determined what he had to do with his life. The desire to control his own destiny contributed to his passionate determination to succeed as a professional writer. Robert E. Howard became his own master, enjoying the fruits of his own labor, and living with a supreme satisfaction that no one could tell him what to do or when to do it.

Robert E. Howard’s childhood was marked by frequent relocation due to his father’s many migrations from one small Texas town to another. All those journeys across the warm Texas landscape brought the young Howard into contact with other migrants who were experiencing the chaotic and brief prosperity of boom towns that rapidly declined after the area was sucked dry of its oil. Young Robert eagerly listened to ghostly stories told by former slaves and the more evocative tales spun by his grandmother. As the years passed, Robert came to appreciate the strength and rough honesty of the people and the land itself.

As he explained in his letters to his friends, all those people, places and images he encountered on his journeys, all those lessons learned about society and civilization, became the inspiration for his characters, invented worlds, and fabulous tales. Howard described Conan’s character as a mixture of oil-field roughnecks and other leather tough working men, both honest and otherwise, that Howard continued to encounter in the Texas oil patch over the years.

By 1928, he had finally succeeded in making a full time living with his writing. Howard’s stories would be published in many Pulp magazines of the period (Weird Tales and the like). His creations would reach a broad, enthusiastic audience and he was proud of his success. Over the following years he created famous characters like Conan the Cimmerian, confidently tramping across the nations of Howard’s Hyborian Age. Other remarkable protagonist included Bran Mak Morn, a pict in ancient Britain, Solomon Kane, a sombre puritan wanderer in a dark and twisted 16th Century Europe, and Kull of Atlanis, a great King living in an ancient world that predated even Conan’s Hyborian Age. In addition, Howard created dozens of characters who existed in wonderfully rendered historical times. He was an amazingly versatile writer, who could spin yarns in all kinds of genres and master them all.

In the relatively brief time of his professional career, Howard published well over a hundred stories in different pulp magazines and even more poems. He is generally acknowledged as the father of the Sword and Sorcery genre, which continues to provide heroic inspiration for fantasy authors to this very day.

Howard’s life was not free of heartache and tragedy, yet Howard channeled even his darkest anguish into his stories. He endured and prevailed, but at a huge personal cost that eventually demanded payment. On the night of the 11th of June, 1936 Howard succumbed to a deep depression, the tragic combination of his own darker impulses and a long series of emotionally painful experiences with which he could no longer cope. As he had often intimated in his bleakest poems, Robert E. Howard took his own life with a pistol borrowed from a friend.

In thirty brief years, Bob Howard played many parts. He was a good and caring son, a creative and imaginative teller of tales, and a loyal friend to many men and women who were privileged to know him. Howard lives on, his memory enshrined in his immortal characters and stories. With humble gratitude for his profoundly enduring legacy, we celebrate this 104th birthday of Robert Ervin Howard.

Additional Information

• Detailed REH biography by Rusty Burke
• Official Conan Homepage

Since the news on the Conan movie are rare these days, i wanted to take the time and write a little summary on another Robert E. Howard project. Even before he created Conan, he created Solomon Kane. A puritan living in a dark version of our 16th century, rich with dark magic and great fights. This hero has, after years of hard work, found his way to the big screen. Davis Films and Wandering Star Productions came together to realize this interesting project with the creative talent of the young British director Michael J. Bassett. The first public premier at Toronto Film Festival is over and an official trailer is released.

So without further ado:

• Solomon Kane Homepage
• Solomon Kane Twitter
• Solomon Kane Facebook
• Solomon Kane Myspace

You can find two exciting videos on the official homepage and on the facebook, so join the pages to stay in touch with this great looking movie.

Dirk Blackman, one of the writers for the, as we reported, second Conan movie posted a practise Conan screenplay on his private blog. As he states he created the script to see if he can get into the right mood to write a Conan screenplay. The screenplay is an adaptation of the Frost Giant’s Daughter, one of Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories, that was adapted in many Comics and pastiches. It’s the story of Conan meeting the cruel daughter of Ymir, the Frost god of the Vanir and Aesir living far up to the north, above the lands of Cimmeria. The screenplay itself would transform into a 5-6 minute short-film as Mr. Blackman states and he stresses the fact it’s not much of a hint of how he wrote the screenplay he was hired for, or the quality present in the finished script for the second Conan film.

I think the scenes and pacing he extracted from the original story are well chosen, though i think he generally took to few pieces of dialogue portraiting Conan again as the dumb brute as he was pictured in the existing Conan movies. Additionally I think the screenplay misses the fact, that Conan was lured by magic, but was carefully aware of it, even mocking her that if she would lead him into a trap her kinsmen would fall flat on their faces with their heads chopped off. The pure confidence and even arrogance of the young Conan and the raw and brutal power that even mock the gods is missing in the screenplay.

Since he states that this is only a practise and does not hint at how his Conan screenplay will be written, I hope he did not take as many liberties in his movie script, as that would mean it would lack all that makes Conan special and different from “ye average sword wielding bad ass”.

UPDATE: Dirk Blackman was so kind to write a very long and explanatory answer to the many comments he got on his blog and in the REH Forum. I think it’s great of him (and not unexpected, he always was honest and open to the fans) to take the time and explain his thought process and the process of creating a screenplay.