Red Sonja Gets A New Director

So, fucking what? Was my immediate reaction.

I had long since abandoned all hope for that project.  It was clearly and obviously going to be dripping with Woke. 

One of the writers was Tasha Huo, whose only credit at IMDB was for a gardening documentary.  This likely means she is a known and uncredited script doctor. 

Joey Soloway was going to be the boss, and she is definitely a known commodity. Her credits include such opera as: How to Vajaculate: If You Build it, She Will Come.  Fuck the Parents. I Love Dick (kind of surprise to me considering what she looks like).  And her magnum opus; Transparent.

Her first choice for the title role of Sonja herself was the decidedly un-Celtic-looking Hannah John-Kamen.  

Not that that mattered as I had zero doubt that Red’s chainmail bikini would be banished in favor of full-body modest-wear plate armor.  Take that, male gaze!

I am not naturally given to extremes of pessimism, but I think the Black Pill was justified in this case.  Also, Soloway only took the job on the condition that Red Sonja rights holder, Avi Lerner, surrender absolute creative control unto her.  

I suppose that that had been one ray of hope for the property if I had looked at it.  I’m certain that Avi Lerner was indeed completely happy to give her full and unquestioned creative control.  

Right up to the point where she wanted to do something he didn’t.  

For those of you who don’t know, Lerner owns Millennium Films.  He used to make the kinds of movies that were too low quality for Cannon Films to touch.  However, he has had a bit of success with the Expendables series. 

But now, Soloway, Huo, and Brown Sonja are now supposedly out and M.J. Bassett is in as the director.

The project is starting from scratch, yet again.  It’s been doing this since before 2009.

So, I’m quietly graveling away.  “*grumble, grumble* Who the hell is M.J. Bassett when she isn’t mucking up Red Sonja?  (*googlegooglegoogle*). Let’s see, one episode of Reacher.  Meh.  Lots of TV work.  Power, Iron fist, Strike Back. *grumble, grumble*  Oh, she did several episodes of Ash Vs the Evil Dead, cool.  But has she done any features?  Ah, there’s one; Solomon Kane.

…

SHE DIRECTED SOLOMON KANE?!?!?”

John Milius would have been my first choice for Red Sonja.  But Solomon Kane was an outstanding Robert Howard adaptation.  I mean it felt like it was made by someone who had actually read the Kane stories.   Sure, there were studio-driven compromises like an origin story, but they were acceptable compromises. The big thing was that the director got the character. When he put on his puritan hat for the first time on screen it absolutely meant something, the character, as a whole, had become Solomon Kane, and he was now recognizable as Robert Howard’s creation.

This director seemed on the face of it to be an excellent choice. One of the best imaginable from the looks of it.

I should have called it a night and not googled her biography until the morning.  But I didn’t.

Her deadname is Michael.

Okay, I’m done here.