Someone’s baking frownies! As producer Joe Gatta tells Empire, Brett Ratner will no longer be directing his remakes of Conan the Barbarian or Red Sonja.

“We’re currently in the process of hiring a director,” he told us. “For the past six months we were discussing the movie with Brett Ratner, and for more timing issues than anything else we had to part ways with Brett. We all wanted him to do it, believe me; just the timing didn’t work.”

On the plus side, this means the world is spared another Brett Ratner movie.  The downside is, Brett Ratner probably got paid a bunch of money for doing absolutely nothing yet again.  I can only imagine their pre-production meetings over nachos.  “Yo, so me and my boy Ben Lyons were talking about this over hookah the other night, and we think it’d be really sick if Conan had a robot sidekick.”  “But, Brett… it’s about barbarians.  They didn’t… have robots.”  “Hmm, I dunno, homey, your call.  But I think we might have to schedule another one of these free-nacho parties to get this all squared away.”

Yesterday at Comic-Con’s Red Sonja panel, Robert Rodriguez (Producer), Rose McGowan ("actress"), and Douglas Aarniokoski (director) sat down to answer a bunch of questions. I imagine the first five were "Arnie uh what?  How do you spell that?" and the next ten were "So… she’s gonna kill shit with a sword in this, right?"

GRRR, BLACK WHITE AND RED!  CHICKS LICKING BLOOD OFF THEIR FACE!  THE ORIGINALITY MAKES ME WANT TO SHIT!

Says commenter Eibmoz, "She’s gonna need that sword since she can’t act her way out of a paper bag."  According to four out of five dentists, that’s a burn. 

[Story, Pictures] 

The always often accurate Page Six is reporting today that director Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan have split.  Presumably, this means that Rodriguez has fired his penis as casting director, or at least now his penis will be allowed to do a more thorough job. 

McGowan was hoping to star in at least three planned Rodriguez films – a remake of "Barbarella," "Red Sonja" and "Woman in Chains!"
"Too bad ‘Grindhouse’ didn’t gross $100 million. Then, maybe, ‘Barbarella’ would have gotten the green light," said one source. "Instead, the moguls were saying, ‘We need a bigger star, a bigger name.’ " Jessica Alba has been touted as a possible replacement.

Well of course she was.  Any time you need a hot chick to just stand there while you draw some CGI elephants around her and it doesn’t matter how dead-behind-the-eyes she is, Jessica Alba’s name will come up.  Anyway, I hope these remakes still get made.  I plan to show up to the premiere blasting Kansas in my Pontiac Fiero, rocking some giant overalls with graffiti on them.  Haven’t you heard?  Crappy stuff from other decades is so hot right now.   

Robert Rodriguez is producing a film adaptation of Red Sonja (you may remember the 1985 version with Brigitte Nielsen), with his penis once again serving as casting director.  His girlfriend Rose McGowan (above right), who looks like a dish soap ad from the 50s, is set to play the lead.

"I was surprised when Rose brought me a script of Red Sonja that she liked," Rodriguez says. …"I found it very entertaining. Sonja was strong, smart, cunning — just about everything she’d have to be to survive."

…Yeaaah… so apparently he also let her choose the script…

"When they first came to me with it, I thought it was funny," says the actress, 34. "I do have a body made for sitting on a veranda with mint juleps and a parasol. I don’t know why I always have to save the planet."  [Because you're bad at acting –Ed.]
…McGowan and Rodriguez have not seen Nielsen in the original, and they have no plans to catch up. As the actress explains, "Why put that in my head?"
Instead, the origin story, to be directed by longtime Rodriguez associate Douglas Aarniokoski, will take its cues from the comic books as well as works by pulp novelist Robert E. Howard, father of the original Sonja (then spelled Sonya) and Conan the Barbarian. [USA Today]

You may remember that Rodriguez also tried to cast McGowan in his remake of Barbarella, only to have Universal back out of the project (though he claims the split was a result of a budget disagreement, not McGowan).  Anyway, I’m sure this will be really good, and that all the bathrooms on the set will be super clean because Rose McGowan makes Robert Rodriguez pee sitting down.  "I’m really starting to get used to it!" I imagine him saying.