He-Man Being Resurrected For A New Movie
After years of starting and stopping, a new rumor states that a new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe movie could be coming soon.
This article is more than 2 years old
A live-action reboot for He-Man’s Masters of the Universe has been discussed for around a decade. In early 2020, the starring role had been cast with Noah Centineo, and the project appeared to finally be gaining momentum. Then, as with many projects in 2020, the news quieted down and He-Man was once again in limbo. Now, according to insider Daniel Richtman, the project is moving forward once again.
At this point, all Richtman is sharing is that he’s discovered the movie is back in the works. He promised more updates on that soon. Before the project went quiet, however, we knew quite a fair amount. The question is, has anything changed?
In the early 1980s, Mattel came out with their He-Man toys. They were a huge success for the company. In the summer of 1987, He-Man got his own movie: Masters of the Universe. The film starred Dolph Lundgren and mostly took place on Earth. The movie was a commercial flop, making less than its modest budget. It was also a critical failure. Worse yet for He-Man, the toys stopped selling in the year following the movie’s release. Despite all this, the movie has now become a cult-hit. This may be due in part to the comic book series and cartoon, which were a bigger hit with audiences.
The new live-action He-Man movie is apparently coming from Sony, and they have shifted through multiple writers and directors already. For a while, the writer was David Goyer, then Alex Litvak and Mike Finch were paired up. Then Jeff Wadlow, who reportedly finished a script in 2014. Christopher Yost did a rewrite. Then Matt Holloway and Art Marcum teamed up. Some of the attached directors have been McG, David Goyer, and the last we heard, Aaron and Adam Nee. Hopefully, all this changing around means Sony just really wants it to be good and is looking for the right fit.
The Masters of the Universe reboot even had a release date scheduled for March 2021, which has now been scrapped. Before He-Man seemed to disappear altogether, the latest rumor was that the movie would be released directly to Netflix. This would be an excellent fit for the project, since Kevin Smith is currently working on a He-Man & The Masters of the Universe eight-episode animated series reboot. When he last tweeted about the project, he indicated that early 2021 is the earliest we could expect to see a trailer for the animated series.
As for the live-action He-Man, we can’t be sure we know the basic plot of the story. When McG was director, we heard it would be an origin story. This indicates the story may also take place on He-Man’s home planet. That may be a good idea since a lot of the original movie’s criticism was about the movie taking place on Earth.
Though Noah Centineo was still talking about the He-Man movie as recently as August 2020, it’s unclear whether the movie is still happening. After a decade of Sony working to make the project happen, would they really stop now?. Hopefully, as Daniel Richtman promised, we’ll be hearing more about the movie going forward soon.
