Conan the Barbarian series almost came to Amazon Prime

[Andrew NDB]

But...

https://fandomwire.com/she-saw-only-...ve-to-netflix/

[Leo656]

I'm not sure the character "works" anymore, quite frankly.

I don't really follow the character much, but it's well-known I do follow He-Man, and the two characters' fates in the broader pop culture landscape are somewhat intertwined because the latter was obviously inspired by the former. As such, part of why the He-Man movie has been in development hell for two decades is because the Conan character has had multiple high-profile movie projects fail. Whenever a studio gets the MOTU rights, there's generally a Conan project in development ahead of it somewhere else, so they say "Let's see how Conan does before we commit to anything," and then the Conan project fails and He-Man Movie Project #945 goes back to zero because "the market isn't right".

Apparently, from a lot of what I've read as relates to either property, market research across the board says you just can't "sell" this type of character anymore. Like okay yeah, in this one case it's one idiot and her "toxic masculinity" spiel and blah blah, but people have been rejecting the whole "barbarian" thing for a really long time now. Apparently "the male characters being under-dressed" is actually a huge sticking point as to why there's no audience for it in film anymore, which I can totally believe people generally being that immature. But there's probably other factors, too. Could be that, like Tarzan and a lot of stuff from a bygone era, the character and the type of stories he was present in is simply no longer in fashion.

I mean, the Mamoa one was supposedly pretty faithful to the books and people trashed that one, too. Could be people just don't like that kinda thing anymore. I'm not shocked that chicks wouldn't be all that into it, but it seems like not too many other people are either. We'll see how the project the article mentions they're working on now ends up doing, if it ever comes out.

All the article really tells me is that there needs to be less of a dictatorial role in place in the development of movies and TV shows. This sounds like it was ultimately only on the one person's whim to move forward with the show or not, and she decided to kill it for her own petty reasons. That's not really a good thing regardless of who that person is or what their agenda is. One would think there would be more of a conversation with these things and less of "Because I Say So." Especially if it's a project a studio was already fairly committed to and which had a lot of internal support otherwise.

[neatoman]

From the looks of it, doesn't really seem like it got cancelled, just moved to Netflix.

Anyway, before I read through the article, I was wondering if the real reason might have had something to do with the copyright status of the character. In most of the world, he's been considered public domain since 2007 and he'll be public domain in the US by 2028. Maybe it's just kind of seems like a waste to license the character when basically anyone can use him?

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I mean, the Mamoa one was supposedly pretty faithful to the books and people trashed that one, too.

Because it wasn't a good movie. And we know they shot the whole thing as PG-13 (a PG-13 Conan movie, wow) and then did light reshoots to sprinkle some R elements into the mix.

[AquaParade]

Conan is going to come back hard when the pendulum swings. He will be the "Wonder Woman" of modern masculinity.

First male-barbarian-lead in a film...
that anyone remembers.

You read it here first.

[Leo656]

How do they get around the "Dudes don't wanna watch an oily, muscled-up dude in a loincloth" variable? Because I'm serious, this comes up ALL the time as the primary reason these characters no longer "sell". It's a medium aimed entirely at dudes but dudes are too insecure to watch it because "Ew, guy isn't wearing pants".

Again, we see it plenty (here and elsewhere) about the He-Man character; "Ha ha, you like guys in loincloths, you must be Teh Gay!", and he's a little bit more "dressed up" than Conan generally is, so if it's a factor in one then it must by logic also be even more of a factor with the other.

I mean to me none of this sh*t is a factor, because I'm a mature adult whose general attitude is "get over it", I'm just saying, this is a thing that people very often bring up.

It'd be cool to see a Conan resurgence, though. I'm admittedly not very well-versed but I like what the character represents and the general aesthetic, like the whole Frazetta vibe, I really dig that stuff a ton. I never read much of the literature but to me when I think of Conan I immediately think of those awesome Frazetta paintings more than anything.