Picture Credit: Getty Images and Netflix
Writer and director Robert Rodriguez recently sat down with the popular podcast host Joe Rogan to discuss a range of subjects. From filmmaking and Hollywood to his personal life and pop culture, the interview lasted well over two hours. Netflix came up a couple of times, including the fact that he pitched his Conan trilogy idea while Netflix held the rights to develop a TV series based on Conan the Barbarian.
The director of the film recalled working with his kids on the 2020 kids’ hit, We Can Be Heroes. “I was working with my kids, and we created a company called Double R [Productions]. Later, Netflix approached me and asked, ‘Could you make us a Spy Kids-type thing? Those always do well.”
“I thought about it,” the director continues, “in the room and came up with the idea: little kids as superheroes who have to save their superhero parents. That became We Can Be Heroes, another Double R movie. My kids helped write it with me. It ended up becoming the most-watched and rewatched movie in Netflix history. Nothing even comes close — kids just can’t stop watching it. Honestly, I was just trying to make an example for my kids about how to create and manifest something, and it ended up working way better than I expected. It really showed me — sometimes when you’re trying to teach someone else how the creative process works, you end up creating your biggest success.”
Of course, he’s right, the film was a massive success and still is, and although a sequel was announced in 2021, there have been no updates since.
We Can Be Heroes Netflix
The movie has fallen out of the all-time top 10 since its 2020 debut, with newer movies taking the top spots. That said, the film, at the time of publishing, still ranks 10th in Netflix’s all-time most watched chart, which, given Netflix’s growth since then, is remarkably impressive. More impressive is the viewership the movie continues to pull in over the past couple of years. Thanks to the Netflix Engagement Report, which covers viewership from 2023 to 2024, we know the film pulled in 200.90 million hours, equivalent to 119.40 million views. Remarkable, given the amount of time that has passed. To stack that up against other Netflix Original movies from 2020, to show how impressive that is, The Midnight Sky did 10M views, The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two did 55.70 million views, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey did 5.9M views, and The Prom did 1.5M.
What’s Netflix’s appetite for films right now? Rodrguez had one word: action.
“If you ask Netflix right now, what kind of movies do they need? They’ll say action, action, action. We don’t have enough action. Sure. And internationally, so we’re going to make the thing that people always buy, and they’re also really fun to make, and you’re going to be perfect at it.”
What happened to the Netflix Conan the Barbarian series?
Cast your mind back to September 2020, and a big bombshell dropped: Netflix had optioned the rights to Conan the Barbarian and had put into development a live-action series.
In the interview, he detailed his long-intended goal of making a movie trilogy set in the franchise. Rodriguez said, “I was gonna do a trilogy: Conan the thief, Conan the buccaneer and mercenary, and Conan the king,” continuing, “I even wrote Jim Cameron and wanted to do it. We were gonna do kind of like what we did with Alita. I said, ‘Dude, let’s do a Conan movie and we’ll make it look like the paintings.’ Technology wasn’t there yet.”
Of course, then Netflix came in with the rights to adapt the Robert E. Howard into a live-action series or an animated series. In the original report, it is stated that Netflix was searching for a writer/showrunner to pen the adaptation, and it turns out that Rodriguez was among the candidates.
As is often the case when Deadline reports on projects while they are still in early development, Netflix is no longer pursuing the Conan the Barbarian project, according to Rodriguez, because the rights have expired. “Netflix had it,” Rodriguez told Rogan, “I went and pitched it to them. And then they let the rights lapse. Sometimes it’s too much baggage for a character.” That could potentially refer to the fact that Netflix came to the conclusion that there would be high expectations for relaunching Conan. If you go into forums when the project was first announced, you got that impression immediately.
Rogan, excited by the prospect of a Conan the Barbarian, offered to do Rodriguez a solid, “Dude, let me call them. Let me get on the phone with Ted Sarandos. Let’s go make it.”
Rodriguez added that, “No one has captured the spirit of Conan from the books yet,” while also suggesting that Jason Momoa has, in his opinion, been the best on-screen Conan to date.
Picture credit: Universal Pictures / 20th Century-Fox
Are you disappointed Netflix isn’t making its Conan the Barbarian series? Let us know in the comments down below.
