Red Sonja has hacked and slashed a swath of delicious fictional violence across popular culture for more than 80 years.
It's been awhile since the ginger barbarian queen put demons and dictators to the sword in any comic books or movies. The character hit a peak with the 1985 portrayal by Brigitte Nielsen in the eponymous movie co-starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but then faded from popular culture.
The wild warrior woman is waging a comeback campaign and her cartoon carnage has drawn on Prince George for some of its drama. While there is talk of a reboot live-action movie to be directed by Simon West, and a television series produced by Brian Singer, those are merely discussions.
What's real, new, and P.G.-powered is Red Sonja: Queen Of Plagues, an animated feature film hot off the presses from Dynamite Entertainment and Shout! Factory production houses, working with the character ownership company Red Sonja LLC.
It is made in the "motion comics" style of animation and stars voiceover power player Misty Lee (Ultimate Spider-Man, TV series TripTank, Killer Kids documentary series, the video game The Last Of Us, and much more) in the lead role.
In one of the supporting roles is a name known well to the broadcasting and theatre communities of this city. Mark Wheeler is the Mel Blanc of the Pattison Broadcast Group in Prince George. His voice appears in myriad forms for radio and television ads, and he now goes to the international level in the role of Apos, the king's confidant.
His is not the only local voice in the movie. Becca Strom has the role of Dark Annisia, Red Sonja's childhood friend, a sister figure who turned evil over the years. In addition to being an award-winning actor in the Lower Mainland, the Prince George expatriate also works in the field of casting direction. She had a hand in gathering the voices together for the Red Sonja project.
"Becca called me. Since she was now a talent agent looking for people who could do things like character voices, she thought of me," said Wheeler. "I'd worked with her through theatre for many, many years and not once in that time did I ever play myself. There were a lot of accents. She knew I liked doing that, so she made me one of the people she gathered together."
"Mark is so talented, and I first met him years and years ago on a stage production we both were involved in back in Prince George," Strom concurred. "Mark was one of the people I thought of first when I was gathering my first clients. He's incredibly talented, and he's not the only one. I've got other Prince George people in mind as well, for future projects. It was great that Mark was a fit for this one."
Wheeler never had to leave Prince George to take part in the production. The preliminary meetings were held on the phone or by Skype, and even his acting was done remotely. Several characters were given a test-run by Wheeler before the producers finally settled on Apos.
"The whole thing was logistically quite easy for me. I had access to a production studio so I could do all my dialogue there and just email it to them," he said. "I'm just happy they asked. I do this every day in my real job, as a writer and producer for The Drive and The River. I'm one of the few people who doesn't mind being a total goof in front of a microphone. It's actually something I'd like to do more of."
Other major names in the Red Sonja: Queen Of Plagues cast include voiceover veterans Shannon Kingston, Scott McNeil, B.C. child star Kiefer O'Reilly, comic writing big-wig Sean Patrick O'Reilly in a voice role, and many more.
The film is 72 minutes long, based on the 2013-14 graphic novel by Gail Simone (author) and Walter Geovanni (artist). Simone directed the film. It is available now from the Shout Factory website and through Amazon in Blu-Ray and DVD formats.
