Today's Round-Up is a mixed bag. Sometimes you reach in and pull out a nugget of gold, and sometimes you pull out a cow pie. Sometimes you end up with a little of both. Let's just start with what is potentially the biggest pile to come out of the bag: Brett Ratner (Rush Hour 3, X-Men: The Last Stand) is close to signing a deal to direct the half-anticipated, half-dreaded Conan update. On the plus side, the writers reportedly looked to Robert E. Howard's original pulp stories of the 1930s to create their version of the sword-wielding barbarian. On the minus side for Ratner detractors, they're now "doing a quick polish" to work in some of the would-be director's ideas. What those ideas might be is left to your imagination. Perhaps Ratner will work all the crap out of his system on Beverly Hills Cop 4, which he's likely to complete before starting any other project.

Tags: Captain America, Conan, director, First Avenger: Captain America, Joe Johnston, October Sky, Rush Hour 3, The Rocketeer, X-Men: The Last Stand

If you're a fan of Conan the Barbarian, you're likely a fan of Red Sonja, his female counterpart, also created by Robert E. Howard. However, you're likely not a fan of her 1985 movie starring Brigitte Nielsen. Despite featuring Ah-nuld as a less-exciting warrior named Kalidor, it was campy as hell, with a kid sidekick and some fat comic relief, and the final nail in the coffin was that it deprived Sonja of her trademark steel bikini and gave her a ridiculously bad hairdo. Well, Rose McGowan has apparently been cast as the new Sonja, and if anyone was ever born to wear a steel bikini, it was her. (Sorry, Jennifer Lopez.)

Tags: comic book movie, Conan, Grindhouse, Highlander, Planet Terror, Red Sonja, remake, Robert Rodriguez, Rose McGowan

Djimon Hounsou made quite a stir back in March when he revealed that he was developing his "dream project," something that had to do with Conan comic books -- especially since a Conan movie is in the works without a cast attached. But rumors of Hounsou playing Conan were officially put to rest today with the announcement that he will play Thulsa Doom, a character from the Conan and Red Sonja comics, who was played by James Earl Jones in Conan the Barbarian.

Tags: Barbarian, Blood Diamond, comic book, Conan, Destroyer, Djimon Hounsou, the, Thulsa Doom

You hear about them all the time -- awesome Hollywood props going for big bucks and then getting locked away somewhere where no one will ever see them again. Isn't it time we took back these historical treasures? And by "take back," I mean shouldn't we buy them ourselves, and lock them away somewhere where only we and a handful of our friends will ever see them again? Well, now's our chance -- online site liveauctioneers.com is hosting a big Hollywood auction, with tons of film-used superhero costumes (Superman, X-Men, Daredevil, Batman, Captain America and both the movie and TV Spider-Men), as well as a ton of items from Terminator, Jurassic Park, Blade Runner, Highlander and Conan, and it ends August 1st, which means we have to move quick.

Tags: auction, Batman, Blade Runner, Captain America, comic book movie, Conan, costumes, Sci-fi, Spaceballs, Spider-Man, superhero, Superman, Terminator, Wolverine, X-Men

A while back we reported on how the producers of the Witchblade movie had released a teaser poster before a writer or director had been chosen. Since no actors had actually signed on, a generically sexy female was shown on the poster wearing the Witchblade gauntlet. But once the teaser site went up spotlighting the scantily clad superheroine, the film quickly gained a director and a writer -- so why hasn't that worked for Conan?

Tags: Barbarian, Conan, Destroyer, remake, Sahara, Witchblade

Right after I learned that Robert Rodriguez would be producing a Red Sonja movie starring his live-in starlet Rose McGowan, I heard that the two had split up, and immediately panicked. What would become of the film? Would there be a new actress? Or a new producer? Or a new, dead film in the gutters of Hollywood? Well, apparently, nothing has changed; furthermore, my prediction that this movie would be worth it just for the chain-mail-bikini promotional artwork has totally come true.

Tags: Charmed, Conan, Red Sonja, Robert Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, San Diego Comic-Con, Sin City