The Red Sonja movie has been in the works at Millennium Pictures for close to a decade, and the long-delayed film seems to have hit another bump in the road.
Filmmaker Joel Soloway came on board after X-Men director Bryan Singerto was dismissed, and was to direct and serve as co-writer alongside Tasha Huo. Ant-Man and The Wasp star Hannah John-Kamen was cast as Red Sonja's lead, while there were rumblings that Sacha Baron Cohen had been offered the role of Kulan Garth.
The Illuminerdi, via ComicBookMovie.com, is claiming that John-Kamen has now dropped out of the movie and the hunt is on for a new Red Sonja. Soloway is also apparently out as director. There is some good news for fans, however, as a replacement has been found in M.J. Bassett; his credits include Solomon Kane, Silent Hill: Revelation, and Inside Man: Most Wanted.
Red Sonja was created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel Comics in 1973. Marvel Comics published stories featuring Red Sonja until 1986, and returned to the character for a one-shot story in 1995. In 2005, Dynamite Entertainment began publishing stories of the heroine, during which the original Sonja was killed and replaced by a "reincarnation". The series was rebooted by writer Gail Simone in 2013, telling an altered version of Red Sonja's early life story via flashbacks. Subsequent writers of Red Sonja have included Amy Chu, Mark Russell, Luke Lieberman, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner, among others.
Red Sonja has appeared in numerous titles, both as a solo protagonist and together with Conan, as well as in crossovers with characters from Marvel Comics and Dynamite Comics. A Red Sonja novel was published in the 1980s written by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney, and a feature film starring Brigitte Nielsen in the title role, Red Sonja, was released in 1985.
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