According to Momoa, Conan director Marcus Nispel started him off with an eclectic collection of material (comic books, Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories, etc.), saying the director envisioned an incarnation of the character “like [Sean Connery as James Bond] – just very charismatic and you fall in love with him.”
What it's like to play Conan:
“It’s really, truly an honour to play him. I love the fact that he is not the superhero, he’s a man that’s gritty, he’s truly a man, but under the circumstances he does heroic things.”
This version of Conan is more faithful to the comics:
“The wardrobe in [the 'Conan' reboot] is really pulled from the Dark Horse Comics. Obviously the poster looks like the Frank Frazetta painting. We pulled from some of the comics – some do Robert E. Howard’s stories, some do their own. We pulled from a little bit of everything.”
The goal of the re-imagined Conan franchise:
“… [What] we’re doing is really an origin story starting from the very beginning of what it was like when [Conan] was born, being cut out of his mother’s womb, becoming this little bad ass warrior and slowly watching his father die in front of his eyes. And then him being this pirate and beef, and slowly finding the man who killed his father… This is really the essence of Conan in this movie.”
I'm not sold on this remake. Like it or not I enjoy the Arnold Schwarzenegger version quite a bit. I will definitely keep an open mind, and give this one a shot. I think the supporting cast is a nice mix of solid actors and good eye candy. The chance of seeing Rachel Nichols in something primitive and provocative might be enough to make me get my junior mints and head down to the local theater.
Conan The Barbarian stars Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ron Perlman, and will be released on August 19, 2011.