In the early hours of June 11th 1936, the well known pulp author and creator of characters such as Conan and Solomon Kane, shot himself with a pistol, outside his house in the village of Cross Plains in Texas. Even though his father, Dr. Isaac Mordecai  Howard, did all he could to save his son’s life, Mr. RobertErvin Howard died 8 hours later at 4pm. But the legacy of Robert. E. Howard is living up to this day.

In his room a lonely chair was standing in front of the table, where he had written all his stories on a mechanical typewriter. A last piece of paper had been fixed into it by Howard that fateful night, to write his last words:

“All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over and the lamps expire…”

73 years ago he took his own life but his stories would continue to influence generations to come. Not only did he inspire greatness in many fantasy writers and invented a whole new genre of fantasy – Sword and Sorcery – his stories, his worlds also went on to be recreated and brought to life in all different types of media.

While he is most famous for the creation of Conan the Cimmerian and bringing to life his own world – The Hyborian Age – in a unique, brutal and savage way, with words like thunder and lines that resonate in the reader’s mind, his skill was not limited to this type of magnificent story telling.

He had shown his skill and perfection as a writer in many other types of stories and poems. His mind wandered beyond the imagination of most and told stories of the Great West, of a dark and twisted Europe in the times of Solomon Kane, of the long gone kingdom of Atlantis and its great KingKull and also more historical stories about strong and honest men and women and beautiful poetry, that complemented his unique melodic rhythm in writing.

He was a true Teller of Tales!

We thank you Robert E. Howard, for every line you delivered, for every character you have created and will further spread the knowledge of your legacy throughout the world. Rest in peace wherever you may be Robert E. Howard, through your stories you will live on.

Links about Robert E. Howard

• Wikipedia page about REH
• REH creations that are in the Public Domain
• Owner of REH license

Harry Knowles of Aint it Cool News has the honor of doing the first review of the new Solomon Kane Film today.

Despite Harry’s know penchant for using superlatives, all in all it is pretty damn promising. He says that “by the end of the film [he] was completely ecstatic that Purefoy had the role” of Solomon Kane, and praises the supporting actors as well. Having seen the previous works of most of the involved, I was not really afraid that bad acting would sink this movie anyway, though. Even more of a pleasant surprise is therefore what he says of the filming: 

…throughout everything this film is BEAUTIFULLY SHOT. Not with filters and bullshit color tones – No. This film feels dirty, feels frigidly cold, life does not look easy. The actors don’t look like actors with shiny white teeth and perfect hair.

Finally a director that seems to understands the gritty world of Robert E. Howard!

To me the greatest thing is still what he says at the end of the review, though:

This is the adventure that hypes us up for more and that’s the best I could have hoped for the first SOLOMON KANE adaptation. A desire to see more from this same team!

That is indeed what I hope for as well. According to what producer Paul Berrow has told us, the next film is planned to take place in Africa, including N’Longa and a certain staff.. The script writing is still underway on the sequel, though, so nothing is written in stone.

So, when do you get to see it? Well, seeing as this is an independently produced film, they are currently working on getting distributors. Some are already signed, with France, Greece and Belgium already having release dates on imdb (though the one for Greece is obviously wrong, seeing as it has passed). A private screening will be held in Cannes to secure distribution for other territories, including the US.

Michael J. Bassett has announced on his private blog that his little baby the upcoming Solomon Kane – Solomon is another famous character from Robert E. Howard, hence we include this news here – film is finally wrapped, mixed, glossified and finished! Obviously he seems to like his own work and says:

It’s not gimmicky or contemporary, just a very classically made and beautiful to look at dark-fantasy-action-adventure.

And at least the very few set pieces he posted on the blog hint for a visually very appealing movie. With James Purefoy playing Solomon Kane, the movie already has a great actor in its lead. The cast also consists of Josiah Kane being played by the astonishing Max von Sydow and the red girl from “The Parfum” – Rachel Hurd Wood.

The only thing that is missing now, is a great trailer and the producers doing proper advertisement for it! We don’t want another Outlander to happen, so the best of luck to you Michael!

As reported in the official Conan boards a British production company, also consisting of people who created the Rome TV series, are planning to pursue a TV series based on Robert E. Howard’s Conan short stories.

Due to Copyright reasons they are going to use the Public Domain stories as the source for the series, to avoid any trouble with CPI and not use the Conan name in the advertisement or title of the treatment. As reported by an associate of the group the usage of the name Conan in the series itself is not prohibited, since it is a very common Gaelic name.

The present working title for the first treatment is supposed to be “Robert E Howard’s The Devil In Iron” and they plan to make it with a 90 minute length. Not much more than these outlines are known yet as the project itself is in its early stages.

To me this sounds very interesting as the adaptation of the REH stories directly points out to be much closer than any movie can ever go, due to different market, costs and structure of a series compared to a full feature film. The fact that creatives from Rome are involved spawns even more hope, because i personally thought the series was done with the right production values and had the right detail to characters and setting that many movies cannot afford due to time limitations (recent example Watchmen, which is a great movie but feels a bit “stuffed”).

Solomon Kane is another one of Robert E. Howards more famous characters he created in his short stories and poems. Just as Conan he is kind of a bad-ass and the stories itself are just as action packed and well written, so i thought i give you an update on the status of this REH movie.

As the director of the new upcoming Solomon Kane film wrote on his private blog, the new Solomon Kane film has reached the last stage of active, creative work: the sound mixing. He is spending some time personally in the sound studio  in London to supervise the mixing of the several hundreds of sound layers per scene. In the last weeks and months he has continuously posted little articles talking about the movie on his blog, including some set shots that give a little hint on the quality of the set design and it looks amazing.

Lets hope once Conan has a director he will be just as passionate and into the whole production as Bassett is on Solomon Kane and maybe gives us small insights on the production via a blog too, since those views through the keyhole are really what make a “production” more personal and interesting to follow than just official news and trailers.