She was played by Brigitte Nielsen in the 1985 film Red Sonja, which also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor (a Conan clone). The film was directed by Richard Fleischer. It performed poorly at the box office. Avi Lerner and Danny Dimbort's Millennium Films and Randall Emmett and George Furla's Emmett/Furla Films announced they have acquired the rights to produce and distribute a feature film based on the “Red Sonja” property as well as the allied and ancillary rights. The picture will be produced by Randall Emmett, George Furla and Avi Lerner as well as executive produced by M. Dal Walton III, Luke Lieberman, Nick Barrucci, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short and Boaz Davidson. The property is currently out to writers and directors. A remake of "Red Sonja" is currently in the works. It is currently in pre-production and very little has been decided on. It is scheduled to be released in 2008. Red Sonja makes an appearance on the "Conan" TV series, in the episode, "Red Sonja." Extra info-- In Conan the Barbarian, Sandahl Bergman played Valeria, a thief and the love of Conan’s life. Bergman was offered the role of Red Sonja, but turned it down, choosing instead to play the villainous Queen Gedren. It took Dino De Laurentiis almost a year to find an actress "Amazonian" enough to play the title character; in fact, he was still looking eight weeks before the production was due to start, when he saw Brigitte Nielsen on the cover of a fashion magazine. The 21-year-old native of Helsingør, Denmark, who was in Milan on a modeling job, soon found herself on a plane heading for Rome and a successful screen test. Schwarzenegger had great success in the two Conan movies, but his next film, James Cameron’s The Terminator, was a real breakthrough. When De Laurentiis approached Schwarzenegger and asked him to appear in an extended cameo and take second billing in Red Sonja, the actor agreed out of a feeling of obligation. He worked on the movie for only three weeks, and was very unhappy with De Laurentiis when he discovered he had been given top billing for what was essentially a supporting role. Ennio Morricone, who wrote the music for Red Sonja, is one of the most celebrated of film composers. He has written scores for more than 400 movies, including Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, and Roland Joffé’s The Mission. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy gave Red Sonja a scathing entry. The main criticism was that it was a "B-movie" with bad characterization, bad acting and an entirely clichéd display of swords and sorcery. Schwarzenegger himself even said "It's the worst film I have ever made." And he joked "Now, when my kids get out of line, they're sent to their room and forced to watch Red Sonja ten times. I never have too much trouble with them." In particular, the Encyclopedia accuses the movie of being homophobic and for purposely portraying homosexuality as a negative, evil trait. Gedren is portrayed as a lesbian whose rivalry with Sonja is based partly on the fact that Sonja once rejected her sexual advances. Likewise, the wizard is depicted as gay; one scene involves him accidentally conjuring up a homoerotic image. In contrast to the negative critism, a dedicated cult following has grown up around the 'Red Sonja' film. At the time acclaimed film critic Pauline Kael was to say, "Though it has all the trappings of a B-movie (hammy acting, cheap production values), it also sports a quasi-sexual tone, coming over like something of a pre-history 'Barbarella'. Fleischer creates a vivid atmosphere, using the romantic light of Italy to great effect....one comes out of the cinema feeling that, they probably shouldn't have become as wrapped up in this tosh as they did". Red Sonja shares many plot elements with Ator l'invincibile 2, also more popularly known as Cave Dwellers due to its lampooning on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. For instance, in Ator 2, a scientist/wizard guards the Geometric Nucleus (a similar item to the Talisman) when his castle is attacked by the villain. A messenger attempts to warn Ator, who is training with a Chinese sword master, Thong, but is shot by an arrow on the way before falling into Ator's arms. Similarities abound throughout the two films. The director of the Ator series of films, Joe d'Amato, created the Ator character as an almost direct copy of Conan the Barbarian, and used the Ator movies to cash in on release timing of the Conan movies; the similarities of the second Ator movie and Red Sonja are no doubt related. Arnold Schwarzenegger was originally to have reprised the role of Conan in this film, as the Red Sonja character was a spin-off of the original Conan novels. Ultimately, a new character was created so as not to violate continuity with the Conan movies.[citation needed] (Or was it a licencing/copyright matter ?) The original theatrical trailer of this movie contains cutting room floor footage of scenes glimpsed only briefly in the film's prologue: Sonja, left to perish in her burning home, is saved by her dying brother, Barlok; Gedren, prior to her disfigurement, addresses her soldiers and slaves. The name of Ronald Lacey's character, "Ikol," spelled backwards is "Loki." Loki is the god of mischief in Norse mythology. He is described as the "contriver of all fraud". Sandahl Bergman was initially cast as the title character, but decided on portraying "Queen Gedren" instead to help avoid typecasting. Brigitte Nielsen asked Pumkin on the first season of Flavor of Love if she had seen this movie as part of a lie detector test. Pumkin answered yes; she was lying. It is commonly believed that Robert E. Howard created the character of Red Sonja in one of his Conan stories. In reality, he created a character with a slightly different name — Red Sonya — that appeared in The Shadow of the Vulture, a non-fantasy work of historical fiction, and inspired "Red Sonja," the character popularized by the 1985 movie, who actually first appeared in a Conan comic book written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Smith in the early 1970s. Sound samples from the movie were later used in the 1987 computer game Barbarian by Palace Software Comic book writer and artist Wendy Pini, who frequently performed as Red Sonja at conventions and other venues, was considered for the role. This movie is said to have been the starting point of a steamy affair that occurred between Schwarzenegger and Nielsen.