Jason Momoa hopes to launch a franchise playing a shirtless warrior-king with the upcoming release of Aquaman. Early buzz suggests this effort will likely be more successful than the last movie franchise Momoa starred in. Late in the summer of 2011, hot off of Game of Thrones, Momoa made his big to be the Conan the Barbarian. What could go wrong?

The first Conan the Barbarian was a bloody, R-rated hit when it was released in the summer of 1982. Arnold Schwarzenegger was still primarily a body builder when he donned a loin cloth and flexed his way to movie stardom. You couldn’t make a movie like the original Conan today. Ironically, if you want to see that kind of violence, you have to turn to TV shows like Game of Thrones.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis planned a Conan trilogy with Schwarzenegger, but things didn’t go exactly according to plan. The first sequel, Conan the Destroyer, failed to duplicate the success of the original. Fans complained about the sequel’s watered-down PG rating (this was prior to the existence of PG-13.)

The real issue was that Schwarzenegger was getting to be too big of a star to make more sword and sorcery movies. The same year as Conan the Destroyer, Schwarzenegger also starred in the first Terminator movie. The next year, Schwarzenegger fulfilled his contractual obligation by appearing in the Conanesque Red Sonja.

No longer legally bound to De Laurentiis, Schwarzenegger said “hasta la vista” to the series. Never one to waste, De Laurentiis recycled his Conan 3 script as Kull the Conqueror once it was clear his leading man wasn’t coming back.

Since Kevin Sorbo’s barbaric flop in 1997, rumors have swirled about another actor taking up Conan’s sword. For a while, Dwayne Johnson talked about playing the barbarian. He hoped to interest Schwarzenegger in costarring with him in a reboot. But Schwarzenegger was transitioning into politics by then.

Going back to Schwarzenegger, Conan has been a part that athletes have used to break into movies. As the Rock established his acting cred, he outgrew the need to play barbarians. Although along the way he did play the Conan-like Scorpion King.

With Johnson out of the running, potential Conan producers were waiting for another beefy leading man who could take up the mantle. Enter Momoa. The Hawaiian hunk turned heads as the barbarian king Khal Drogo on HBO’s fantasy series, Game of Thrones. If ever there was a trial run for Conan, Game of Thrones was it.

All the while, the film rights to Conan were trading hands. Eventually they were secured by the trio of Nu Image, Millennium, and Lionsgate. These companies had previously partnered on the 2008 Rambo sequel and they thought Conan could be similarly profitable.

Robert Rodriguez was attached to the project in 2008. He brought in Rose McGowan with plans to spin off a Red Sonja movie for her. Later, Brett Ratner was announced as the new Conan director. But Ratner wasn’t ready to commit. He was developing Beverly Hills Cop IV at Paramount and didn’t want Conan to get in the way. Angry over the premature announcement, Ratner left the project.

What do you do when you have scraped the bottom of Hollywood’s barrel of directors? You hire a guy like Marcus Nispel. Nispel is best-known – if he is known at all – for having directed the Michael Bay-produced remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. So, there you go.

The new Conan the Barbarian was very much of its time. The 3-D explosion that kicked off with Avatar in 2009 was just petering out. While the movie was being made, it was titled Conan 3-D, but the title was changed as sales of 3-D tickets started dropping off. However, Avatar’s villain, Stephen Lang, got ported over to the Conan reboot.

Conan was also part of another unfortunate trend. There were a ton of pointless remakes of 80’s movies at the time. Conan opened at 4th place at the box office which is pretty lousy. But it managed to beat out a remake of Fright Night which opened in 6th place that same week. Both movies got their butts kicked by The Help and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

While promoting Conan, Momoa was quoted as saying that he was writing scripts for sequels. This made a lot of headlines because it seemed presumptive. Partially because the sequels would never happen but also the idea that the studio would allow the beefcake actor to write them. Later, Momoa claimed he was quoted out of context.

A lot of people misquoted me. I’m not actually writing the script. But I pretty much now know what I can extract from myself as an actor and what places we want Conan to go emotionally and physically so I have some really great ideas to put in a script.

Momoa made it clear that he loved playing the character and was ready to make a trilogy. But audiences yawned at the prospect of a PG-13 rated barbarian. Truthfully, I don’t think an R-rated Conan would have fared any better. Tastes were changing. Superhero movies like Captain America: The First Avenger were on the rise. 3-D and 80’s remakes were on their way out.

The only thing Conan had going for it was Momoa. I am hearing a lot of buzz from women who plan to see Aquaman solely for its leading man’s hunkiness. That could have worked in Conan‘s favor. Momoa was reasonably well-known from Game of Thrones at the time, but the show’s popularity has grown over the last seven years and Momoa’s appearances in other DC movies have earned him additional fans.

I may be mistaken, but it seems like the timing for Momoa to become a movie star is right. Conan came along too soon to take advantage of Momoa as a leading man. But Aquaman seems like the right movie in the right genre at the right time. Timing counts for a lot when you’re trying to launch a franchise.

Like Dwayne Johnson before him, Momoa has become too big for Conan. But the original barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, isn’t as big of a star as he once was. Following the failure of the reboot, Schwarzenegger announced he would return to acting and that Conan would be one of his first roles.

But that didn’t work out. While waiting for the right script, Schwarzenegger starred in a lot of movies that didn’t connect with audiences. The failure of Terminator: Genisys likely sealed Conan‘s fate. If audiences didn’t want to see Schwarzenegger in his signature role, what were the odds they would turn out to see him play an aging barbarian.

For now, there’s no word on what could be next for Conan. It’s still possible, although I think unlikely, that Schwarzenegger could return to the role. If not, I’m sure some muscle-bound actor will come along eventually to take up the part.

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