Rose McGowan Joins ‘Conan,’ But Not Likely As ‘Red Sonja’

Let’s face it. The long awaited “Red Sonja” film starring Rose McGowan is probably never going to happen. Or at least not with Robert Rodriguez at the helm, who has clearly moved on.

Though McGowan herself would like to continue the project one day, she has done the next best thing in the meantime in signing up for Marcus Nispel’s “Conan The Barbarian” reboot simply titled, “Conan.”

So could she be playing the titular Red Sonja character? Doubtful, Variety says she’s playing an “evil half-human, half-witch” character which doesn’t sound anything like the aforementioned female warrior (though some fansites have speculated that it’s still that character; we’re very doubtful, that smells like wishful thinking).

The film also stars Jason Momoa as Conan, Rachel Nichols as a love interest, Stephen Lang as the villain, Ron Perlman as Conan’s father (Mickey Rourke dropped out eventually), Said Taghmaoui and Bob Sapp.

The film starts shooting in Bulgaria next week, so a 2011 release is expected. We’re taking a wait and see approach to any excitement.

Note, it’s not very clear in this piece, but Rodriguez was asked about “Red Sonja” by MTV and he thinks that the company who now owns it may do it after “Conan,” but he’s not part of it (just in case you were wondering). This will probably further fuel the McGowan is Sonja posit, but that would still be a pretty big leap of character transformation.