Brett Ratner moving forward with new Conan film

DIRECTOR Brett Ratner says he is now in the process of working out the costs and locations for his proposed new Conan movie.

He said: "That's something I'm actively attached to. We're just budgeting the script and trying to figure out when's a good time and where to shoot it. It's kind of a global landscape."

Ratner had earlier spoken about finding an actor to play the barbarian warrior famously brought to life by Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying: "I believe it should be an unknown... Conan is kind of iconic. It's kind of like when you do Superman.

"Look, it's difficult to fill those shoes but they came up with a new Batman, they came up with a new James Bond, you know?"

Speaking about his interest in the project, he said: "Growing up, my favourite comic book was Conan. [It] was the first comic book I ever read."

I reported in November that writers Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Jean Connelly were reworking their script for the $85million warrior fantasy remake to incorporate Ratner's ideas. Pre-production was said to be under way way in Bulgaria on what is envisaged to be the first in a franchise.

Conan is a fictional character created by Robert E Howard in 1932, in a series of stories in Weird Tales magazine. He has since appeared in books, comics, two animated series, one live-action series starring Ralf Moeller, two films starring Schwarzenegger, a video game and a board game.

The movie rights to Conan were acquired by Millennium Films in August 2007 and wants the new big-screen version completed in 2010. The aim is for the reboot to be more faithful to Howard's source material than the earlier movies.

A new animated feature, Conan: Red Nails, is currently in production and is based upon Howard's acclaimed short story of the same name in which Conan finds a lost city called Xuchotl. Hellboy actor Ron Perlman is to voice Conan, James Marsden will voice Techotl, Mark Hamill is Tolkemec and Clancy Brown is Olmec.

As well as working on Conan, Ratner is also developing a script for Beverly Hills Cop 4, while his next directing project is likely to be Trump Heist, a return to the action-comedy genre of the Rush Hour film series.

Trump Heist will star star Eddie Murphy as the leader of a group of con artists who land jobs at Donald Trump's Trump Tower so they can steal from its mega-rich residents.

Sources: Movieline via Screenrant.