Robert Rodriguez (Grindhouse, Sin City) will produce a new big-screen adventure featuring the flame-haired comic-book vixen, Red Sonja. While Brigitte Nielsen wielded Sonja's sword in the poorly received 1985 version, Rodriguez's real-life girlfriend, Rose McGowan (Grindhouse), will wiggle into the metal mesh bikini in the 2010 release.

"I was surprised when Rose brought me a script of Red Sonja that she liked," Rodriguez told USA Today from his home base of Austin, where he is shooting "Shorts," a family film with James Spader and Jon Cryer. "I found it very entertaining. Sonja was strong, smart, cunning ? just about everything she'd have to be to survive."

"When they first came to me with it, I thought it was funny," said McGowan. "I do have a body made for sitting on a veranda with mint juleps and a parasol. I don't know why I always have to save the planet."

Rodriguez considers her a perfect fit as the mighty, and mighty voluptuous, avenger. "Rose is a pistol. She's whip-smart, has attitude to burn, is sexy, extremely strong, yet has a vulnerable side that would surprise her closest friends. That description also fits Red Sonja."

Not that his star isn't committed to the whole barbarian babe concept, including the crimson locks. "I do have a very scrappy-do personality," says McGowan, who will undergo intense training before filming starts in October. "I lean toward physicality. The story has characters trashed by life who fight their way back. That is my theme."

McGowan and Rodriguez have not seen Nielsen in the original, and they have no plans to catch up. As the actress explains, "Why put that in my head?"

Instead, the origin story, to be directed by longtime Rodriguez associate Douglas Aarniokoski (assistant director on many Rodriguez's films), will take its cues from the comic books as well as works by pulp novelist Robert E. Howard, father of the original Sonja (then spelled Sonya) and Conan the Barbarian (also undergoing a movie revival).

"Howard's goal was always, first and foremost, to spin a good yarn and to entertain," says Rodriguez, who is hoping his Red Sonja turns into a franchise. "That's our goal."

MovieSet got their hands on some promotional artwork for the upcoming Rose McGowan-starrer "Red Sonja." In addition, the site also scored themselves the general storyline for the film, direct from Nu Image.

Plot: In a dingy tavern, a woman posing as a harlot brutally murders the warrior who just hired her. She rips a distinctive amulet off his necklace. Before she's able to escape, the group of soldiers recognize her: the wanted outlaw Red Sonja. They attack-but they're no match for this flame-haired whirling dervish of steel. She takes them all out, then rides off into the woods...

Years earlier, we find Sonja as an innocent teenager living in Western Hyrkania. While sparring with her childhood sweetheart, the mischievous Cyrus, a group of marauders ride into her town. Her entire family is butchered before her eyes. The brutes - each of whom wear the familiar amulet (among them, the warrior from the tavern) - then turn their attention to young Sonja, savagely raping her. Left for dead. Sonja awakens to pure devastation. Her village has been burned to the ground, the corpses of her family and friends strewn about the wreckage. Barely alive, Sonja crawls through the countryside until she can no longer move. Deciding to end her life, she jumps from a cliff to a river below, but somehow her fall is magically slowed, she lands underwater where she encounters the mystical Red Goddess, who tells Sonja she will become a powerful warrior, the Goddess's Blade of Justice.

She awakens in the camp of Ozzyus, a thief and warrior, the man who is to become her mentor. Here Sonja wins over Ozzyus' band of rogues over with her tenacity and heart. She begs Ozzyus to train her, as she wants to exact her revenge on those who destroyed her family. Ozzyus finally agrees. Sonja immediately shows supreme natural ability in fighting. Time passes, Sonja's skills become formidable and eventually she joins the band on several robberies, finally killing a noblemen. Knowing she's now a wanted criminal, she decides it is time to leave Ozzyus - and to seek her vengeance on the five men who killer her family.

Flash forward again, and Sonja is bathing in a forest brook when a man sneaks up on her. She quickly has her blade to his throat when she realizes this man is Cyrus, who begs Sonja to join his fight against the villainous Kulan Gath. Sonja refuses. In the town of Shadizar, Sonja fights her way to the next member of the band who killed her family. Theron. Before she kills him, he tells Sonja that her own father worked for Kulan Gath, and that is why they came to her town. Sonja is captured, and sent to the gallows, where she's rescued by Ozzyus, who was on his way to meet Cyrus and join his rebel army. No sooner than Sonja agrees to fight Gath, Cyrus is kidnapped by Gath's men. Sonja tracks Gath's henchmen into the mines under the temple City of Pah Disha, rescues Cyrus, and they discover an underground temple, built by thousands of Hyrkanian slaves in which Kulan Gath plans to harness heavenly powers and become as a God to rule the world with an iron fist. Sonja and Cyrus know they must stop this before it happens, thus setting up a final epi