Netflix is doing a Conan TV series.
The days when I would get excited over a new reboot are long over. These days my reaction is more along the lines of, “No Daddy! Please NO!!!”
The guys from Midnight’s Edge are optimistic about it but I just don’t see Netflix doing it right. They are just too Woke to allow it to be any good.
As my long time readers know, I’m quite fond of Conan.
There was a decent version of Robert Howard’s best-known work in development at Amazon but after the #METOO Night of the Long Knives, the new head of production killed it for the unspeakable crime of Toxic Masculinity.
I suppose, Diversity and Inclusion aren’t too big of a problem with Conan. And there is one weird ray of hope for it. Barrack Obama is a somebody at Netflix and he loved the books. But I can just see the poor old Cimmerian having to declare his pronouns before decrying the crimes of his Whiteness.
Unless, of course, they cast Idris Elba in the title role.
NEXT
Disney’s (sort-of-annual) Investor Day was scheduled for October 7th. Now, this isn’t an Earning’s Call, this is an investor relations dog and pony show. Fine, a show biz company has to do these things.
Now, Disney is saying that the announcement for this that went up on September 15th, was put up in “error.” And apparently was left up for weeks in “error.” So, no, there won’t be an Investor Day.
Disney is very big on “a spoon full of sugar”* helping the medicine go down but there is no sugar to go around. 28,000 cast members went to the wall, while executives got their full salaries restored. Mulan is an epic financial failure and a major publicity black eye in both the US and China. #WhereIsMushu? was trending at the top of China’s version of Twitter for quite a while. The Chinese wanted something like the animated feature (which they love it turns out) instead they got a shitload of baizou pandering.
There is no good news for investors so Investor’s Day is canceled.
However, Disney can not get out of the Earning’s Call.
NEXT
Star Trek News
Nobody at Paramount is being too open about the troubles with its most troubled franchise. In truth, it’s only franchise. I was wrong about Mission Impossible, they don’t actually own that.
Kurtzman’s name is off of Star Trek, but Akiva Goldman’s name is still on it, and he wrote Picard. So…yeah.
Regardless, Strange New Worlds is a go. It appears to have found funding from somewhere, possibly Paramount itself. There was some kind of deal struck at arbitration after all. As I said elsewhere, it’s in Paramount’s best interests to up the Star Trek brand’s value.
And there is a new project that has been fast-tracked in development. The Odyssey of Khan. Yes, our favorite superman is back. Dev Petal (Slumdog Millionaire) is signed for the title role. And Secret Hideout has no connection to it at all.
While a lack of Kurtzman is a good sign, and the fact that Sherry Redstone is calling Star Trek “the Crown Jewels” is an even better one, (it means the people at the top have a good idea of what it should be), both of these projects are fundamentally flawed.
It’s hard to get excited about a character when that character’s fate is set in stone. We know how it ends for both Khan and Pike. Also, their plot armor is impregnable, the audience knows that whatever threat they are facing at the moment means nothing because they die somewhere else. One of the (many) reasons Solo failed is that the audience couldn’t care less about how his story started, when they knew exactly how it ended.
I’m not saying it can’t be done but it isn’t easy for a good writer. Let alone Akiva Goldman.
Okay, I’m done here.
*I don’t recommend this by the way. You mostly gag on the sugar.
UPDATE: the above statement was “a joke.” I am perfectly aware that around the turn of the las century, medicine was usually administered by mixing it into a liquid, thus the addition of sugar added in to try and mask the taste. And yes, I am also aware that this was the origin of the milkshake.
I knew these things when I made that joke.
Stop being “that guy.” being the smartest boy in the class, didn’t make you popular in grade school and it isn’t working here either.
The Dark Herald 
…both of these projects are fundamentally flawed.
And that is the problem. They have to stop looking to the past. For the most part, people do not want prequels. Star Trek fans are definitely tired of prequels and JJ reboots. That is the one reason there were fans excited about Picard. It was at least further along and not going back to the past. Going backwards wasn’t the reason it was another tire on the tire fire that is Star Trek.
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Conan: well, I’ve never cared about him, but I’m morbidly interested in what Netflix could do with the most toxically masculine character this side of James Bond; perhaps the main character will be his daughter and namesake Conan II?
Disney: they have recently announced that all of their Marvel movies have been, once again, postponed; moreover, they have shuffled the release order a bit – Black Widow is still first in line, but then Shang-Chi SHOULD come out before the uber-woke Eternals. Among other things, this means that 2020 is the first year in over a decade without a single MCU movie.
Star Trek: I wonder if they’ll deal with the fact that, according to the Original Series, the Eugenics Wars that spawned Khan were supposed to happen in the 90s – yet another example of Star Trek’s stunning capability in predicting the future!
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