When the news broke this morning that actress Rose McGowan had joined the cast of Marcus Nispel’s upcoming Conan movie as “an evil half-human/half-witch,” one question seemed to be on the minds of fans: What about Red Sonja?

Originally tagged to play the female barbarian back in 2008, McGowan reported in August 2009 that Red Sonja had been delayed. The character was rumored to make a cameo in Conan, since she made her first appearance in Conan the Barbarian comics, but today’s casting news certainly makes such a cameo difficult — if not altogether impossible.

Fortunately, MTV News checked in with Red Sonja producer Robert Rodriguez during the recent South By Southwest Film Festival to find out where the project is at these days.

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Happy St Patrick’s Day, everyone! We hope you have a good one and are wearing some green!

Update: Later in the day Rose made these very funny tweets regarding the Holiday:

Happy St. Patricks’s Day! I’m off to binge drink green beer, er, I mean coffee.

I’m wearing a green tshirt that says FIGHT ME, I’M IRISH. Hahaha. No kisses or pinching for me.

The Power of Three is making a comeback.

Zenescope Entertainment revealed this week that they’ve obtained the comic book rights for Charmed, a supernatural-themed TV series that aired on the WB Network for eight seasons. Created in 1998 by Constance M. Burge, the series followed three sisters — Piper (Holly Marie Combs), Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) and Paige (Rose McGowan) — who were descended from a long line of good witches and tasked to face the forces of evil.

Zenescope’s Charmed comic book series will pick up with an original story that takes place after the series’ eighth season. Paul Ruditis and Raven Gregory (The Gift) are co-writing the title with artist Dave Hoover (Captain America). Ruditis has written several books based on TV series — including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Roswell — in addition to two Charmed novels.

“The key to this series success is to strike a nice balance in creating a brand new, intriguing storyline for fans of the television show while also not alienating Zenescope and comic book readers who haven’t really followed it before but might want to now that it’s a comic,” said Zenescope Editor-in-Chief Ralph Tedesco.

“The great thing is that Paul and Raven have done just that with this story arc,” continued Tedesco. “Anybody will be able to pick up this series and follow it whether or not they ever watched the show before. Moreover, fans of the show are going to be thrilled when they see where this story goes.”

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Blake informed us (thanks!), Danny Trejo said in a recent interview that Machete would be in theatres by September, and also revealed some details about it.

“It is going to be awesome. We duplicate scenes from the trailer in the movie. What that movie has is the three B’s, what I like to call the three B’s. And what that is is babes, bullets and blood. And then it’s got machetes, too. The film takes off from the trailer and then it just gets so over the top. I think the movie really lives up to the trailer. I’m really, really proud of it.” He goes on to explain one of the stunts in the film. “I dive out of a window on a guy’s guts. It’s really just unbelievable.”

The cast for the movie is what you might call “star-studded,” with Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal and Don Johnson all appearing. Trejo had this to say about that lineup:

“What a cast. I asked Robert, ‘How did you get that cast?’ He said, ‘My wishing rock.’ You know, like in Shorts. Everybody wanted to work with Robert Rodriguez.”

Finally, Trejo spoke about the following the film has just from that short trailer.

“Machete has a huge cult following, just from the trailer. I mean, in London, I was signing this guy’s back because he’d gotten that picture of Machete tattooed on his back. I mean this big. I said, ‘Boy, I hope you like the movie.’ He says, ‘We really like the trailer.’ But after this comes out, he might have to go get another tattoo.”

Rose McGowan has confirmed to us that she is indeed going to play a half-human/half-witch villain in the Conan movie, directed by Marcus Nispel. She’s off to begin filming in Bulgaria on Friday. This is what she had to say about what it means for Red Sonja:

I don’t know what it means for Red Sonja. Time will tell. I will say that the Conan role was too good to pass up!

According to Sofia Echo, the three-month production of Conan takes place at Nu Boyana Studios.

We’d like to congratulate Rose for scoring this awesome sounding role on Conan and wish her best of luck on the project!

With the current April opening date racing towards us, its becoming painfully obvious that Robert Rodriguez much anticipated feature length Machete movie spin off – from the Grindhouse trailers – is not going to be showing in a local theatre near you soon. No trailer, no PR, no posters, no website … Lets face it, the release has slipped again. Boo! – As said by 24FramesPerSecond.com.

Fox recently took over the US rights to the flick, which probably explains the unwelcome delay. A new distributor equals a new schedule, new marketing strategy, and new later release date. Speculation about when it will now be puts it anywhere between June to autumn, but be sure we’ll keep you posted.

At SXSW, which just happened a few days ago, Robert Rodriguez premiered footage from Predators, and he revealed he’s actually rebooting his own franchise and that this new Spy Kids will be his next project as a director. I surprisingly haven’t found any reports about Machete … IMDb, which was updated days ago, simply lists the release for a TBA 2010 – status still being post-production.

Rose McGowan was set to reprise as Cherry Darling, appearing in the fake trailer at the beginning of the movie.

According to Variety, Rose McGowan is joining Marcus Nispel’s (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2003), Friday the 13th, 2009) Conan revamp! I am excited Rose is announced to a new project but I already feel this is gonna create some confusion for some people.

She is set to be playing an evil half-human/half-witch in the movie, not Red Sonja, whom we’ve all eagerly been waiting for since we were teased with the Red Sonja imagery back in 2008. Red Sonja first appeared in Conan the Barbarian and while the character will not take part in the new film, it’s kinda cool Rose will somehow get into this Conan-universe. But what does this mean for Red Sonja?

Back in August of 2009, Rose said this:

To clarify press reports: Red Sonja is delayed. I pulled out of doing it in ‘09. Not permanently. Hopefully will follow Conan.

I am still contracted to do it Red Sonja. Hopefully Filming in ‘10 not ‘09

Only time will tell the fate of Sonja. I guess if Conan succeeds at the box office a Red Sonja film (albeit that new character confusion) might be a smart move. But if the film doesn’t, well we just might be hearing the swan song, like we did with Barbarella. It definitely won’t be being released this year and given our run of luck with the stand stilled films these few years, I’d highly doubt filming either – unless by some chance later in the year. But I’m not an expert, just giving my guess. We’ll of course research and let you know if we find out any other details!

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