Subscribe RSS
Comment RSSConan The Barbarian – Flops, Gets Sued, Screenwriter Feels Sad
24.08.11 # News # 20 Comments
Things are going from bad to worse for Conan the Barbarian, the Nu Image/Millennium revival of the famed Robert E. Howard character. A dismal opening weekend has been followed by news of a looming lawsuit against the production, and now screenwriter Sean Hood has laid bare his feelings about the movie flopping.
Let’s start with that lawsuit, which seems perhaps somewhat misguided in its aims. The new movie version of Conan the Barbarian, starring Jason Momoa as the eponymous sword-swinger, is subject of legal proceedings on behalf of Stan Lee Entertainment, a firm founded but no longer run by the geriatric Marvel Comics legend of that name. SLE is alleging that it still owns the screen rights to the Conan character on account of the current film having been set up via what it calls an illegal deal, struck around the time of the company’s bankruptcy in 2001.
Okay, but it is the aim of the lawsuit which might prompt eyebrows to shoot skyward in the manner of a novice fighter jet pilot confusing the ignition switch with the button which activates his ejector seat. For Stan Lee Entertainment is after 100% of the profits of Conan the Barbarian, an amount which currently stands at box office gross (about $15m) minus production costs (a reputed $90m), also minus prints and advertising (probably not much shy of the previous eye-watering figure). Could the firm not just have chalked this one up as a bullet dodged, and refrained from calling in the lawyers?
One individual very much on the receiving end of that bullet of failure was Sean Hood, one of the credited scriptwriters on Conan, and he has just posted a blog entry about his own reaction to the film’s financial failure. You can read what he wrote in full here, but these are some edited highlights:
When you work “above the line” on a movie (writer, director, actor, producer, etc.) watching it flop at the box office is devastating. I had such an experience during the opening weekend of Conan the Barbarian 3D.
A few months before release, “tracking numbers” play the role in movies that polls play in politics. It’s easy to get caught up in this excitement, like a college volunteer handing out fliers for Howard Dean. (Months before Conan was released many close to the production believed it would open like last year’s The Expendables.) As the release date approaches and the the tracking numbers start to fall, you start adjusting expectations, but always with a kind of desperate optimism.
You begin selectively ignoring bad news and highlighting the good. You make the best of it. You believe.
The Friday night of the release is like the Tuesday night of an election. “Exit polls” are taken of people leaving the theater, and estimated box office numbers start leaking out in the afternoon, like early ballot returns. You are glued to your computer, clicking wildly over websites, chatting nonstop with peers, and calling anyone and everyone to find out what they’ve heard. Have any numbers come back yet? That’s when your stomach starts to drop.
By about 9 PM it’s clear when your “candidate” has lost by a startlingly wide margin, more than you or even the most pessimistic political observers could have predicted. With a movie its much the same: trade magazines like Variety and Hollywood Reporter call the weekend winners and losers based on projections. That’s when the reality of the loss sinks in, and you don’t sleep the rest of the night.
For the next couple of days, you walk in a daze, and your friends and family offer kind words, but mostly avoid the subject. Since you had planned (ardently believed, despite it all) that success would propel you to new appointments and opportunities, you find yourself at a loss about what to do next. It can all seem very grim.
You make light of it, of course. You joke and shrug. But the blow to your ego and reputation can’t be brushed off. Reviewers, even when they were positive, mocked Conan The Barbarian for its lack of story, lack of characterization, and lack of wit. This doesn’t speak well of the screenwriting – and any filmmaker who tells you s/he “doesn’t read reviews” just doesn’t want to admit how much they sting.
Unfortunately, the work I do as a script doctor is hard to defend if the movie flops. I know that those who have read my Conan shooting script agree that much of the work I did on story and character never made it to screen. I myself know that given the difficulties of rewriting a script in the middle of production, I made vast improvements on the draft that came before me. But it’s still much like doing great work on a losing campaign. All anyone in the general public knows, all anyone in the industry remembers, is the flop. A loss is a loss.
Sources: Entertainment Weekly, Quora
The notion that Stan Lee has nothing to do with Stan Lee Entertainment seems ridiculous.
The headline to this article elicited evil laughter from me.
I frankly think that this is what you get when you put too much sick or aggressive violence in this.
I also think if they kept it like the original they might have had a chance of making it a decent remake.
Again I think people like to be entertained, not grossed out.
I think most sci-fi action movies these days try to dazzel, shock and gore audiences into purchasing tickets with excessive CGI, explosions, “3D” and gore, rather than creating a balance in moderation to include originality, creativity, a good story and character development. The Conan remake is a perfect example. The “cheap” aforementioned tactics insults todays more sophisticated audiences who expect more than hi-tech effects and gore for their hard earned ticket money. So, why not just wait and see the “bombs” on DVD?
Poor Conan.
Wow, that’s quite a refreshing insight from the screen writer. I can’t imagine how bad it must be for him to be associated with this.
Then again, if you don’t like the way something is going (i.e. they cut out all your character moments) can’t you just quit?
From the trailers Conan looked quite impressive but the idea always seemed a bit cheesey to me. Ultimately there were better choices on offer that week.
It’s rare that writers want their name taken off the credits, unless it’s an utter disaster (I think Conan is just pretty bland). And it’s probably seen as an insult to industry people when they do. By the time he realised it was going to flop hard it was too late.
I like to be entertained by being grossed out!lots of gratuitous nude ladies are also a bonus.
I’d love to say that the main reason this bombed was because it’s a bad film. It isn’t great, but it isn’t a stinker. The truth is the budget was too big for it to make a decent return. The original Conan made money at a time when budgets were generally low enough to produce hits on relatively low returns. limited audience appeal could still give you a sizable profit margin. Things like Beastmaster also made money. The kind of dosh they routinely fling at films these days would have bankrupted studio’s in the 80s. Plus going to the movies is more expensive and more of a chore. It’s not like you can risk small change at your local flea pit, you certainly can’t use cinema going as an excuse to grope your girlfriend, smoke or as a cover for onderage drinking. All of which means people don’t go to see films in the same way. They have to make plans and this favours older audiences with kids on a day out. Boo hiss, boo hiss.
A $90m production budget (before marketing) for Conan The Barbarian does seem like an insane risk.
Also, unlike Clash Of The Titans, there are no big names in the movie and no awe-inspiring grand scale fx. Where the hell did that money go??
Vaseline to keep that sweaty sheen on during the shoot
Where the hell did that money go??
I really want some one from NU Images and Millennium Films to answer this question too , but with proves and paper payment .
By the way if you read my comment here you will have a good vision for all what is going on in Bulgaria !! The place they shot the movie in !
But again there are some other factors too.. like :
How much they pay the Bulgarian Mafia !!??
How many big parties they did while shooting ??
How much they spend on drugs and call girls too !!??
But mostly ..
How much big mistakes they did while shooting ?
How much films they ruin ?
How many big decors and stuff they did and they were not useful ?
But again I wish to hear and read what those companies will say
This movie was a joke from the get-go. A director who’s already destroyed 2 reboot attempts, mediocre cinematographer, no big name actors. What did they expect? I’m at a loss. This movie was so bad, I’ll bet nobody is going to touch Conan for another 20 years. I do enjoy the way he tried passively to distance himself from the movie.
” I know that those who have read my Conan shooting script agree that much of the work I did on story and character never made it to screen.”
From the first trailer this thing looked like a massive flop and never looked any better after that. I went into the theater wincing. I’m surprised it made as much money as it did.
This is what happens when you make movies with two money slave companies who have nothing to do with Art .. ( Nu Images and Millennium Films ) ..
Those companies use Bulgaria ( The cheapest lands and people in Europe ) to make money from them … Just think about it.. why those companies make movies there ? some answer that question :
Because the nature of Bulgaria is beautiful
Some others say :
Because there are great artists in Bulgaria
I agree with the beauty of Bulgaria but it is not the reason because there are many other countries more beautiful than Bulgaria .. but the real reason is in Bulgaria they do not pay taxes .. and everything is illegal and they can stop an entire central streets to shoot the movie and they will pay almost nothing .. because it is all about contacts and mafia in that country …
As for second answer : it is not true either .. because I worked there and lived there and there are no such great artists that can manage to make a great movie .. and if there were some .. they all went o Hollywood or run from Bulgaria to work some where ells to get more money …
the real reason is because the people who work there they almost work for no money .. they get the lowest amount of money if we compare them with other European countries.
Now I know Movies is businesses but we must not forget it is an Art too … those companies does not care about the second part … see their entire movie history : They made more than 100 movies but they got maybe 2-3 movies that is watchable .. I can not even call them good movies .. because for me good movies is those who you want to watch it again and again .. not just once …
However all what I wrote is based on real experience with those companies and with Bulgarian workers ( I can not even call them artists because they work only for the money not for the art it self ).. and I watched the trailer almost 4 months ago and I wrote about it then that this movie will be a big mistake and I explain it why …
It is not about the writer or the director or even the actors .. give the greatest movie makers to those companies and shoot the movie in Bulgaria with twice the budget.. !! again it will happen the same thing .. because all what they care about is the money not the ART.
Hope you do not take my post as hater or racist … but it is an advice to every movie maker .. If you want to make a great movie then be far away from such companies and do not make your movie in Bulgaria …
Thanks
I am SOOO HAPPY that this piece of sh*t film flopped! First off they picked the WRONG person to play Conan. Moma is a stick boy compared to what Howard stated Conan should look like (& no Howard NEVER said that Conan had dark skin!) Second it is so typical of the clowns in Hollywood to basically say “brown man good, white man bad!” Sorry you leftist clowns, but most of America is getting sick of that sh*t! And third they were pushing this 3D crap far too much. Again America is getting sick of that sh*t! It cost too much and the 3D looks terrible! Don’t believe me just look at the fall in box office sales of 3D to standard films!
Actually conan do have tan skin look at the f**king comics lol and stick figure lol jason momoa is freaking 6’5 he is actually a very good looking and handsome conan I just think the whole story was off and some of the cast could have been better other than that it was pretty good!
Movie was pretty good IMO. All people seem to want to do these days is bash every film released. The film had it’s good points and yes a few things could have been different but it’s still a long long way from being a bad film. I did not see it in 3D and in all honesty don’t really care about that feature.
Some of you folks need to calm down and wipe the lather running from your mouths. Especially you, confed boy! Why do you have to bring race into it, jackass?
This wasn’t a bad film at all. It was pretty good. Basic sword and scorcery flick. It’s there to entertain, nothing more. That’s what most films do. They don’t exist to be artful and if they are it’s a bonus. Geez. I’ve seen far worse stuff get a pass from people. People really are making mountains out of anthills on this one.
If there was ever a list of misunderstood fictional characters, then Conan would quite possibly be top of the list. The original Conan the Barbarian with the perfectly cast Schwarzenegger came close, although the story of Conan raised as a slave, then trained as a gladiator, then falling in love with a fellow thief is a complete departure from the Howard short stories (although in one story he does fall in love with fellow pirate Belit, but her passion for Conan seems to far dwarf his own feelings for her). Conan is a wondering thief and opportunist from a very early age, gambling, boozing, shagging and splitting skulls. On further adventures he takes on roles as mercenary, general and eventually seizes the crown from the mad king of Aquilonia. Further adventures follow King Conan. And as a quick aside, Conan does indeed have dark skin, bronzed by years fighting outdoors and trekking across desert wastes.
Milius got the look of Conan reasonably spot on, thanks to Ron Cobb’s brilliant designs, but alas it suffered by not cherry picking the best ideas from Howard’s original texts and sticking closely to the Hyborean mythology. A great fantasy movie, a poor Conan yarn. And Milius lacked the technical ability to bring such a character truly to life, accepting glaring errors in the production that should have been redone or cut out (take the battle after the orgy where Conan’s sword clearly misses a stunt man’s belly, yet he falls back with blood gushing from his wound, it’s almost as bad as the scene in Red Dawn where bullet/blood squibs explode before the AK47s are actually fired). Basil Poledouris’s score, however, is widely accepted as one of the greatest scores ever written.
Conan the Destroyer. Well, what a mess. The movie opens with Conan pining for his dead girlfriend, something that Howard’s Conan would never do. Conan picks up a new girl in every story, or he already has some gorgeous babe by his side, always wearing barely enough clothes to cover her lithe, supple figure. It seemed that having a wimpy side kick for a few laughs was the trend back then, again Howard’s Conan would have no time for such wimps. The violence was heavily toned down, as was Poledouris’s bombastic score, playing now up-tempo and less brooding. And then you have the plot of Conan hired to deliver a beautiful virgin, unbeknownst to him that the girl is for a sacrifice to bring a demon/god back to earth. Any knowledge of the original Howard yarns would have told the writer that Conan would have killed the others, stolen their gold, and then carried the girl over his shoulder, a prize to be shagged at the first opportunity.
So you have to wonder when we reach 2011 how a new Conan movie could be so gloriously bad. A new Conan movie had everything going for it: digital special effects, an increased readership of Howard’s original stories, Conan games for console and massive multi-player, two previous attempts so their mistakes could be avoided, and the acceptance now of graphic blood and gore, sex and nudity. The BBFC in England now accepts movies far more violent than they would in the past, and often fantasy blood n guts can escape with a 15 rating. Game of Thrones and especially Spartacus have set the bar for bloody violence, sex, and super-charged, realistic combat. But not only that, they have established that this genre can have intelligent scripts and highly engaging stories. It’s a sad day for the film industry when they can’t do better than material made for television.
The new Conan the Barbarian suffers from a lack of understanding both of the genre itself and of the Conan character. They tried to emulate what had come before, but what had come before were poor attempts at bringing Howard’s Conan to the big screen. There was no need to go all the way back to Conan’s childhood, and it was certainly pointless to copy the idea of Conan out to revenge the death of his parents, it is also even more pointless to copy the exact same movie title that came before. Conan the Warrior (or similar) would have given the movie immediate credence that it was forging new ground and was a different animal to its predecessors. Instead the producers opted for the more-of-the-same idea, rather than making a solid original action movie that could have been the foundation for a movie franchise. Awful story, poor script, pantomime acting by some, missed opportunities galore, a hack director who already had a history of failure, and nowhere near enough blood and thunder for a Conan movie. For me personally, I was hoping for a mega-violent fantasy epic, blood gushing from open wounds, heads and arms flying off, skulls split to the teeth, lots of nudity or at least gorgeous lithesome girls wearing next-to-nothing, but most of all a story that at least resembled Robert E. Howard’s creation. The line of dialogue spoken by Momoa – I love, I slay, etc – is close to a line from of the of the original shorts, except in Howard’s world Conan would have spoken it with far less grimness, laughed heartily, then slapped you on the back while guzzling a flagon of wine.
Momoa was a decent choice to play Conan. Sadly the story was poor, the acting was wooden, the script was only worthy of a 1980′s direct-to-video movie, and the director had no visual flair or understanding of the genre or the source material. We hope to see another attempt, by far better talent!
I saw this movie on Netflix and I thought it wasn’t that bad. It had some nice scenery and solid cinematography. While most of the acting is wooden, I actually thought the guy who played Conan did a decent enough job as did Stephen Lang as the villain and Ron Perlman as Conan’s father. The action sequences were fine, but nothing special and are seemed to be overshadowed by it’s thin plot, terrible script, uneven pacing, and cliched dialog. I understood that lots of people, including fans of the Arnold Schwarzenegger versions hated it, but I think that this was a decent, if not flawed, remake.
Anyone who tries to remake something that Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in should expect this return. You might think he’s too old or washed up, but once he’s imprinted his character on it, anything else is going to suck.
Leave A Comment
Author Notes
Post By Paul Martin
24th Aug
Recent Posts
Featured Posts
New Comments
Search
Sequel Updates
Remake Updates
Popular Posts
Popular Top Tens
...more
Theme by M.Hutagalung|Due to the amount of speculation and hearsay, site should be read for entertainment purposes only