Comic-Con ‘08: Red Sonja Panel

The Red Sonja panel with Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and Rose McGowan (Grindhouse) and Doug Aarniokoski (2nd unit director, Resident Evil 3) was held on Thursday, the 24th.

While this wasn’t in the “big hall,” the presentation was in a very large room and it filled up- which surprised me a little bit. Then again considering the history of the people on the project, maybe it shouldn’t have.  It showed me there’s a strong public interest in the two principles on this project: Rodriguez and McGowan.

They presented two new movie posters for Red Sonja that I found most interesting and were handing out t-shirts with the image of the 2nd poster on it.  It was rather coveted by the masses.

Rodriguez chatted about the first time he saw a Red Sonja comic book and his challenge of trying to get his mother to buy it for him.  The challenge was the possible risque cover art!  After that, the Red Sonja comic book franchise was his obsession since he was about 11 years old!

From there, he’s basically become a Robert E. Howard fan.

Panel questions lend some insight into Rose McGowan:
She tends to enjoy roles that embody female empowerment and vengeance.

She made an interesting statement about a turning point in her career. In regards to how her old method of landing movie roles was to wait for good roles to be offered to her, but of late, she’s decided to go after the roles she wants.  The powerful, angry female roles.

Rose as Red Sonja, the fortuitous timing:
One morning Rose was going through some scripts and pointed out the Red Sonja script to the then secretive but fervent Red Sonja fan Robert.  Upon seeing what the script was, it made him snort up his water at the fortuitous possibility of his much favored franchise with his favorite girl.

It’s important to note that Rodriguez’s version of Red Sonja will be an origins film that will be a “cold, hard, bloody, dirty movie“.

For those of you who don’t know the story, Red Sonja was a young girl who is driven by a personal tragedy to become the red headed woman warrior on the path of driven vengeance.  Through it all, she discovers a larger purpose in her life.

Other bits about Red Sonja:
McGowan is starting her sword training this upcoming Monday.  They haven’t locked down any other cast for the film yet and Rodriguez coyly dodged the question of who’d he like to be in it.

Unrelated Bits and Pieces:
Robert Rodriguez’s next  “10-minute cooking school” will be Texas Barbeque and will be included in the Grindhouse DVD.

There’s been progress on a Sin City 2 script.  Frank Miller showed him a written script about 3 months ago and they’re trying to figure out how to squeeze that project in between all the other projects they’re doing.

On the newest Conan project:  Rodgriguez dropped that he could be either the producer or director for that effort and he left it at that, which the audience responded rather exuberantly to.  What a tease!

Images courtesy of MoviesOnLine