Trivia / Conan the Barbarian (2011)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $90 million. Box office, $48.8 million.
• Cast the Expert: Ukafa is played by Bob Sapp, a Mixed Martial Artist and professional wrestler who's no stranger to brawling.
• Creator Backlash: In a 2022 interview, star Jason Momoa described the filming of the movie as "one of the best experiences I've had" but admitted that the finished product was "a big pile of shit", which he claimed was due to Executive Meddling.
• Creator Killer: While Momoa's career was able to recover, this film bombing ended the Hollywood career of director Marcus Nispel. He directed one low-budget horror film a couple years later (Exeter, which was released direct to TV), and retired from filmmaking afterward to become a property developer.
• Star-Derailing Role: While Jason Momoa's career quickly recovered from the film's box-office failure, Rachel Nichols wasn't so lucky, with all her subsequent credits (aside from a supporting role in Alex Cross the following year) being either in television or low-budget horror films.
• Stillborn Franchise: There were talks of starting a franchise, but the failure of the film prevented it.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Among the actors originally considered for the part of Conan include Brendan Fraser, Chris Hemsworth, Jared Padalecki and Kellan Lutz... Damn, those would have been painful.
  • Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke were in talks to play Corin, Conan's father. Schwarzenegger was offered the role, but he declined.
  • Marique was supposed to be a male character called Fariq, and he would be considered an unworthy heir to Zym by his right-hand man Ukafa. After Rose MacGowan's casting, the character was rewritten as a woman then served as The Dragon to Zym, while Ukafa was relegated to a Mook Lieutenant.
  • Originally there would have been a child queen called Illira in the story whom Tamara served as bodyguard alongside an Amazon Brigade, and they would end up separated when Zym invaded their monastery, with Tamara joining Conan in hopes of saving her protégé. In the end, Tamara was combined with elements from Illira.
• Written-In Infirmity: Young Conan gets splashed with molten metal on the day his father dies, giving him scars that align with a real life scar Jason Momoa has.

---