Well, that didn’t take long… it looks like Christophe Gans may already be out of the running to direct Conan. His next project has just been announced, and with a production start of late 2009 or early 2010, it is forcing him to push back another movie he was in the process of developing called The Swedish Cavalier. So what is this big project he will be taking on? Apparently he is directing and co-writing Fantomas, a feature film reboot based on the popular French crime novels. I have to admit, I don’t know much about the character, but the more I read about it, the more interesting it sounds.

Fantomas is a thief, assassin and master of disguise whose adventures were first published in 1911, and eventually made the transition to comics, serials, feature films, and TV. Perhaps the most well-known adaptation is the 1964 film directed by André Hunebelle and starring Jean Marais… it was France’s answer to James Bond at the time.

Variety reports that this new take on the character will be influenced by The Dark Knight, with Fantomas “facing off with a villain of equal or even more dastardly dimensions”. The movie will feature both French and English dialogue, most likely with the hopes of reaching an international audience. Either way, I’m pretty excited to see Christophe Gans do something other than a video game adaptation again (the delay of Onimusha was probably a good thing). What do you think, does this sound exciting? And is the resemblance between Fantomas and Dr. Manhattan just a coincidence?