'Conan The Barbarian' Series To Bring More Swords And Sorcery To Netflix The Streamer

Before becoming King of Atlantis in Aquaman, Jason Momoa picked up a sword as Conan the Barbarian in the most recent feature film adaptation of the iconic fantasy character created by pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard. Since that didn't turn into a new franchise, it's time to give Conan another swing of the sword, and Netflix is taking on that task in a big way.

Fredrik Malmberg's Cabinet Entertainment and Mark Wheeler's Pathfinder Media are teaming up with Netflix to develop a new live-action Conan the Barbarian TV series as part of a new deal struck with Conan Properties International, which holds all the rights to the entire Conan literary library. The deal will allow Netflix to make TV shows and movies based on Conan, both in live-action and animation.

Deadline has news on the Conan the Barbarian TV series heading into development. It's their latest major intellectual property acquisition, following their previous acquisition of the library of books in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, and a variety of comic book adaptations from Mark Millar and his Millarworld banner.

First published in a series of short stories in Weird Tales magazine in 1932, Conan the Barbarian has been adapted into pretty much every single medium out there. Conan was actually the first major character in what is now known as the sword and sorcery genre of fantasy stories. Since then, he's been at the center of countless comic books, feature films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, a few TV shows and animated series, several video games, and plenty of merchandise.

But is there still interest in a character like this when newer properties like The Witcher are already delivering similar kinds of stories? I suppose a Conan the Barbarian series could be another attempt to fill the void left by the end of Game of Thrones. Perhaps fans of 300 will find something to love about the frequently bare-chested hero. Amazon certainly thought so when they were said to be developing a Conan the Barbarian series back in 2018. But we haven't heard anything about the project since then, so it must have died off, possibly because Amazon chose to focus their fantasy energy into a Lord of the Rings series instead.

Since this partnership between Netflix and the Conan the Barbarian rights holders was only just announced, it'll probably be awhile before we hear anything new about the series. After all, Netflix also has several He-Man projects in the works too, so they probably don't want to be overrun with muscular men wielding swords. Or do they?