Outtakes Online: Momoa to miss Hawaii premiere

BY MIKE GORDON / mgordon@staradvertiser.com

A barbarian at the box office sounded like a great idea, especially if he was the star of an action movie home for its opening night. But Hawaii’s Jason Momoa, the scowling leading man in the reboot of “Conan the Barbarian,” couldn’t rearrange his schedule to accommodate a trip home in time for Friday’s first local screenings.

Jason Momoa at Aug. 11 premiere of 'Conan the Barbarian' in Los Angeles. (Associated Press)

“I wanted to be there,” Momoa told me in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. “I had a whole plan set up to be there on the nineteenth and surprise everyone. It was going to be fantastic. There is no better place I would rather be than in Hawaii.”

The 32-year-old actor is in the middle of shooting a film with Sylvester Stallone called “Bullet to the Head.” He’s managed premiere screenings and press events but a trip to the islands was out of the question.

“I haven’t been home in so long,” he said. “But I’m coming home soon.”

“Conan the Barbarian,” which was adapted from the iconic sword-and-sorcery stories of Robert E. Howard, is Momoa’s first feature film. He’s been a working television actor since 1999, when he got a part on “Baywatch Hawaii.”

If you liked Momoa in HBO’s recent hit series, “Game of Thrones,” in which he played a hulking warlord named Khal Drogo, you’re probably going to like him as Conan. Drogo died at the end of the season but Conan is sort of a philosophical sequel, Momoa said.

“People were, ‘Oh we’re bummed Drogo is not coming back. We wanted to see him go to war and do these big battles,’” Momoa said. “Well go to ‘Conan’ then. If you want to go see Drogo go to battle, well he is going to have a little quick shave and then he is going to go kill a bunch of people. Literally it is not that far off.”

“Conan the Barbarian” was directed by Marcus Nispel, whom Momoa considers a visionary.

“He is really going to sink you into that world,” Momoa said. “I think it is going to be truly fantastic. I’m excited to see what that is going to look like and it’s my first movie on the big screen.”

I’ll have more from Momoa in Friday’s print edition of the Star-Advertiser. He wants the whole state come and see his debut.

“It’s not ‘Conan the Barbarian,’” Momoa said. “It’s ‘Conan the Hawaiian.’”
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Mike Gordon covers film and television in Hawaii for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Email him at mgordon@staradvertiser.com and follow him on Twitter. Read his weekly “Outtakes” column Sundays in the Star-Advertiser.

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