It's been rumored for some time, and now it's finally official: Conan the Barbarian is heading back to the big screen.

Nu Image/Millennium and Lionsgate -- the studios who recently collaborated to bring you Rambo -- will collaborate on the new Conan film, and issued a joint statement late last week to announce their new partnership. You already know the gist -- everyone's delighted, couldn't be happier, et cetera -- so we won't reprint it here; we will tell you, however, that according to the studios, production will take place in Bulgaria this summer and fall.

According to Quint at Ain't It Cool News, the Nu Image/Millennium/Lionsgate union will be bankrolling the new Conan to the tune of $100 million -- a figure also bandied about by Variety, where it's being reported that Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer (Sahara) will be writing the screenplay. They'll be writing it sooner than later, if a rumored deal between the studios and the WGA comes to fruition. Nu Image/Millennium's Avi Lerner is quoted as saying:

"It's a possibility, though I haven't studied it enough to make a final decision. The whole strike is stupid, in my opinion. They approached us, indirectly, to make some kind of deal, and we are looking at it."

The new Conan, whenever it comes out, will have a rather large loincloth to fill; 1982's original, which helped rocket Arnold Schwarzenegger to cineplex ubiquity, boasts a 74 percent Tomatometer rating. (1984's Conan the Destroyer, on the other hand...) We've played this game before, but it's always fun: Who gets your vote to play the Barbarian, and why?

Source: Variety
Source: Ain't It Cool News