Conan news

X-Men: the Last Stand director Brett Ratner is finalizing details to direct the first of what Lionsgate and Nu Image hope will be a long series of Conan films.

The first film has a $85 Million budget and Producer Avi Lerner says "The story opens on the battlefield where Conan is born and tells the origin story that sets the stage for what will be the first of multiple films." The writing team of Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Dean Donnelly's Conan script adheres closer to Robert E. Howard's original 1930's pulp fiction stories about the famous warrior than the previous two 1980's films which turned Arnold Schwarzenegger into a star. The scribes are now doing a polish to include some last minute ideas from Ratner. Production is set to take place next year at Nu Image's Nu Boyana Studio in Bulgaria for an early 2010 release.

Interestingly enough Nu Image is also working on a Red Sonja film with Rose McGowan.