Yesterday Jon and I sat in on the Red Sonja panel because we couldn’t get into the original panel we tried – turned out it was 2-hours behind anyway.
Producer Robert Rodriguez, star Rose McGowan, and director Doug Aarnioski were on hand to discuss the picture and Doug gave me some scoops out in the hall after the panel. Head inside for more.
** UPDATED ** The posters they displayed yesterday, which I could not get a photo of but do have a shirt that I’ll grab a snap shot of later, is the look the film is going for. Which shockingly, no one asked during the Q&A portion of the panel.
Robert discussed how this has Red Sonja has been a character that he’s wanted to take the screen for a while and when Rose brought the script home with a stack of the comic he jumped all over it.
He also decided that Doug was the man for the project as he’s been the 2nd unit director on so many of Rodriguez’ picture in the past. You know the scene in Once Upon a Time where they’re rapelling down the building wall? Ya, that wasn’t Robert, that was Doug.
Rose talked about how she’s no longer looking for the ‘girlfriend’ parts she’s played in the past, but strong leading female roles and that Red Sonja really excited her. She’s training 3-hours a day right now, and begins her sword training this week.
The question was asked “Who’s designing the sword?”, but they refused to answer and said it was being worked on by people out of country how have done a lot of cool swords.
I coughed WETA and Doug looked right at me and nodded with a smile. I grabbed him out in the hall and asked if I was right. He essentially told me, I can’t say while nodding again at me.
I then asked him later what the style of the film was going to be and he said, as close as he could describe it, would be Sin City meets 300 and really dirty and gritty. When I asked if the poster was any indication he said “You got it”.
So there you have it. A little more info then anyone else could grab and it happened in the hall.
Oh, and one more thing. Robert is going to be taking on Conan next year. He’s coming back to the big screen.
UPDATE In a brief convo I had with Richard Taylor co-founder of Weta I discovered that Weta is not involved with Red Sonja at least he wouldn’t fill me in. Richard is a very cool man and to have bumped into him on the convention floor and that he was willing to chat was very cool.
