Nu Image and Millennium Films’ Red Sonja appears to be back on track with Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Mechanic) at the helm and an eye already given to the casting of Amber Heard (who next appears in Drive Angry) in the lead.
“Amber is the new Red Sonja,” producer Avi Lerner told Empire today, “but she doesn’t know it yet!”
The catch there is that, while Heard is eyed for the role, negotiations have, apparently, not begun. As such, the role sounds like it is Heard’s to lose.
The character of Red Sonja, a fiery-haired warrioress in a chainmail bikini, seeks vengeance on those who destroyed her family. In her path of destruction she discovers a larger purpose for her unearthly powers: to save all Hyrkania from the villainous Kulan Gath.
Long in development, Red Sonja was once announced to star Rose McGowan and would have featured Robert Rodriguez and Doug Aarniokoski directing. (Officially, Aarniokoski would direct, but Rodriguez told a crowd at Comic-Con in 2008 that that was the result of the tricky ins and outs of dealing with the Director’s Guild and that he’d be very much hands-on behind the camera). The project even went so far as to receive teaser posters and other promotional images.
While the character is often credited to Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian), she only takes her name from another, unrelated Howard character and was primarily designed by Roy Thomas to appear in Marvel Comics’ take on Howard’s Hyborian Age. “Red Sonja” comics are currently published by Dynamite Entertainment.
Red Sonja will presumably spinoff from the upcoming Conan the Barbarian, hitting theaters on August 19th.
