Joseph Bloch has pointed me toward a report that actor Stephen Lang has been offered the role of the main villain in the upcoming Conan film. What's interesting about this story is not who they've potentially cast as the main villain but that the villain remains this "Khalar Singh" character, one of the more questionable elements from the story treatments we've seen thus far, for reasons men more erudite than I have explained. This suggests that, whatever work the script doctors are doing, it's not a significant revision that brings the film more in line with Howard's vision of the Hyborian Age.
Ah well.
I didn't expect it to be much of a revision. Khalar Singh's character as it appears in the draft simply can't be altered without, essentially, tossing the entire script out.
ReplyDeleteStill, I love the idea of casting one of the last people I could ever imagine having the last name "Singh" as the character. I just hope Lang declines the role, he deserves better. I'd actually have preferred Lang for Corin, but then, that would require the script to be worth a damn too.
Projects like this film cause me to wonder if there is a war being waged by the illiterate against the literate.
ReplyDeleteif not war, it does seem like a comprehensive effort to take anything singular or extraordinary and bring out that which can help us see it as ordinary or mediocre. if you're going to make a movie out of a book, let it be a bad book.
ReplyDeleteSingh? Singh?!?!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, what the hell is wrong with these people? Are they completely ignorant of the world outside of Hollywood?
Yeah, they are that ignorant. The last thing the producers are concerned about is making a good movie. I was in a Nu Image film that shot in Bulgaria (like the upcoming "Conan") and have seen the train wreck firsthand. A huge amount of the budget goes right into the producers' pockets from the start, then they cast people who, according to their equations, will sell tickets whether they are right for a role or not. The cast and crew are then left struggling to make something good with the terrible hand they've been dealt. "Conan" is not being shot in Bulgaria for the scenic locations; it's just a place where they can get workers for $30 a day.
ReplyDeleteBeastmaster meets Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, I fear, with Jason Momoa as the last survivor of his people and maybe Stephen Lang as the evil Singh he must defeat. "Conan" looks less and less like anything more than a brand in this film.
ReplyDeleteThe Sikhs ought to protest this film.
Deuce Richardson's (Mis)casting Call For a Barbarian (y’all better sit down for this one) is quite a remarkable read. For those who think it's wrong to judge this film until we've seen it . . . really?
ReplyDeleteThese casting descriptions read like satire.
Many thanks to The Cimmerian. This article helps me finally accept a lot of what's wrong with Hollywood today. Robert McKee is right. Too few screenwriters know how to write a real story any more, which—alas—leaves us with movie after movie of cliche characters staggering through empty plots. Like the Bard wrote, tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.