After years of works on, we’ve heard recent rumblings of the long gestating The Legend of Conan, which will not only star franchise icon Arnold Schwarzenegger, be a direct sequel to Conan the Barbarian, and ignore all the other movies, but it could also be the beginning of yet another new cinematic universe. This officially makes it the Conan the Barbarian 2.
Conan, and many other characters, are the brainchild of pulp author Robert E. Howard. Swedish producer Fredrick Malmberg has long championed the cause of bringing Conan back to the big screen. He even produced the Jason Mamoa starring 2011 reboot. But Conan the Barbarian 2 is an entirely different story. According to Deadline, his new company, Cabinet Entertainment, has acquired the rights to all of Howard’s work, and he has big plans. He says:
“These days, it comes down to brands and characters and we are looking at long-term possibilities. We look at how Marvel played out with its rich based of characters, and this too is a universe that lends itself to exploitation in TV and film. There aren’t many libraries like this.”
There certainly aren’t many collections like this, as Cabinet now possesses the rights to more than 800 stories. And besides Conan there are hundreds of characters that play prominent roles in the world Howard created. Other than the legendary barbarian, the most notable among these are the likes of Solomon Kane and Kull of Atlantis.
Malmberg also mentioned television as a potential landing place for some of this material, which could be incredibly awesome. Game of Thrones has shown that there is definitely a market for this type of high concept, violent, sex-filled fantasy in episodic form.
That’s not much in the way of concrete facts to share about The Legend of Conan or Conan the Barbarian 2 just yet. We know that Schwarzenegger will reprise his role, and a couple of as yet unnamed characters will reportedly return as well.
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