Conan the Barbarian

Short answer: Adapt the stories, already... into a TV show.

We are in a golden age for fantasy entertainment. The Tolkien-verse is getting a prequel. The Potter-verse prequels keep coming. Game of Thrones is getting a prequel series. Also on TV, The Witcher is going full steam (stream?) ahead. And Dungeons & Dragons has, perhaps inevitably, merged with Magic: The Gathering to become one gigantic game. 

Older by far than all of these is Conan the Barbarian. The character first appeared in pulp magazines in the early 1930s. The line to Conan probably starts as far back as Hercules and Beowulf.

It could be argued that The Witcher is today's answer to Conan the Barbarian-- a hero whose power mostly lies his his muscles of iron and will of steel. Conan of Cimmeria-- unlike Geralt of Rivia, or Thor of Asgard-- has no magic powers. Conan also is not what you would call a philosopher, but years of battle have taught him many strategies and tactics. 

And there is something compelling about Conan, or he would not have survived as long as he has. In turn, he has inspired characters like He-Man and Thundarr the Barbarian, both of whose series add sci-fi elements to the basic fantasy swords-and-sorcery premise. Elements of the Mummy series-- especially the Scorpion King spin-off-- also seem indebted to the Conan franchise.

There have been two Conan films with Schwarzenegger: The Barbarian and The Destroyer. A planned third film, The Conqueror, was instead turned into Kull the Conqueror. 

Then was was the Red Sonja spinoff, a 2011 reboot (with Jason Momoa!), and another attempt at either a sequel to that or to the original 2... that never happened. Plus two animated, and one live-action, TV show. Reports of both Netflix and Amazon having a go at a live-action series surfaced as recently as 2020.

And, I agree. An episodic, TV-show approach might work better than a feature-length movie. The movies have, aside from the cult-classic status of the first one, been disappointments. But the highest-rated (on imdb, anyway) installment in the Conan franchise has been an animated TV show. And for most of his early years, he was a character in a series of magazine stories. Even the original intent of the first movie was to create a James Bond-level series.

The model for a Conan show, for me, is Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It ran for 6 solid seasons and still holds up. Plus, it spawned Xena, a hit show in its own right. Kevin Sorbo proved a likable strongman with two strong senses-- of duty, and of humor. That Conan has been relentlessly grim in most depictions is unfaithful to the pulp stories... and ultimately boring for audiences. 

A concept of hero on a long quest, who performs acts of heroism along the way, has stood us in good stead from The Lone Ranger to The Mandalorian (which is, as its Honest Trailer points out, a Western at heart). 

So if Conan is going to make it to his centennial, it should be as a hero of this nature:

Roaming from town to town in search of-- well, for most of his stories, the man who killed his parents (as with Inigo Montoya and many others), he provides aid by defeating localized baddies. And maybe, it turns out these local thugs and gangs and monsters all work for one Big Bad who-- surprise!--  was the same guy who killed his parents all those years ago. And the Big Bad, from his end, starts to wonder who this new hero is who keeps ruining all his plans, and sends a hit squad out for him.

Inspired by his courage, Conan collects some loyal friends among his fellow outcasts, each of whose has developed a survival skill-- say, an archer, a thief, a novice sorcerer/healer, a falconer, a pirate-type with sailing skills, a (very lost) ninja, etc.-- all played by faces familiar to those in the fantasy/sci-fi fanbase, each representing an action-hero archetype.

Eventually, he amasses a band of Merry Men/Women loyal to him and his cause-- to free the land of the iron grip of the Big Bad (and also avenge his parents). 

Counter-program against The Witcher by making it family-friendly (see the aforementioned Hercules show and the 2008 Merlin show) and... ta-da.

With today's effects and some self-aware dialogue, along with the original magazine stories as the plot templates, Conan could once again ascend his skull-encrusted throne and rule the myth-franchise-verse.