After years in pre-production, including a well respected but unproduced John Milius draft, an aborted Red Sonja redux and a countless hours of fan casting, Conan The Barbarian returns to theaters this Friday with Marcus Nispel directing Game of Thrones’ Jason Momoa, as the titular warrior.  Rose McGowan, Ron Perlman and Stephen Lang round out the cast of this 3D bloodbath.Hemming closer to the fantastical Robert E. Howard books, this new Conan is stripped down and vicious. Recently, I sat down with Momoa to discuss his take on the role, the film’s massive body count, the choreography, injuries on set, his reticence to engage in other fanboy franchises, tidbits on Bullet to the Head, and reveals he's going to write and direct Road to Paloma.  Hit the jump for the full interview, the promo trailer for Road to Paloma, and a look inside the interview process.Doing press junkets is a fairly sweet gig. Other than worrying about how you look and sound on screen, it’s easy and fun. You get to hang out in expensive hotels and shoot the shit with other journalists. However, occasionally you run into problems. This one was one of those times.I only saw the movie about 12 hours before the junket, during a double feature with Final Destination 5. As a result, I wrote most of my questions pretty late at night and accidentally left out the name of the current director on Thor 2. I tried to ask the question anyway, but Momoa hadn’t heard about the Marvel sequel’s connection to Game of Thrones. This embarrassing gaff threw me off, so I improvised my follow up instead of reading the script. This is almost always a bad idea, as is evidenced by Momoa’s response. On the bright side, I think my non-rejoinder is pretty funny.Anyway, here's the interview, followed by the first trailer for Road to Paloma, which Momoa plans to direct.  He describes the film as a road movie.Jason Momoa

  • Talks about getting in shape for Conan and did he look at Schwarzenegger's Conan for inspiration
  • Did he ever keep track of how many people he killed in the movie
  • What was his favorite fight/kill in the film
  • He talks about the switchblade fight scene
  • Thor 2 talk.
  • Did anyone get hurt on the set as the level of physicality in the fight scenes seemed rather high
  • Future project talk. Talks about Bullet to the Head, a post apocalyptic in Africa with his wife.  Then he's directing a movie he wrote called Road to Paloma that he describes as a road movie

Here's the first trailer for Road to Paloma:

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