Sacha Baron Cohen Is He-Man’s New Live-Action Villain
There’s a new live-action He-Man movie coming from Mattel and with a director already on board they’ve begun casting. The production’s first add is Sacha Baron Cohen as the franchise’s iconic villain, Skeletor.
Casting Sacha Baron Cohen as Skeletor might lead some to believe this new Masters of the Universe is going in a more comedic direction, but that’s not necessarily true. Sacha Baron Cohen has done as much dramatic work as he has comedy, in the past few years.
What Sacha Baron Cohen excels at is strange. There aren’t many villains that more clearly call for strange than Master of the Universe’s Skeletor.
This is the second recent attempt at making a He-Man movie after a previous attempt at Netflix failed to get to the screen. Mattel hopes to produce this version with Amazon’s MGM Studio. It’s not yet known whether they’ll attempt to make this a theatrical or streaming-only release like the recent Amazon Road House remake.
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Sacha Baron Cohen hasn’t done as much high-profile work in the past few years. His last big role was in the pandemic era released Borat sequel titled Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which was met with mixed reviews. He’s been rumored to be working with Marvel, but that’s not yet confirmed.
As the 80s He-Man movie starring Dolph Lundgren did, this version of Masters of the Universe will take place at least in part on Earth. The plotline pitches the movie as the story of 9-year-old Prince Adam crashing on Earth only decades later to be whisked off to Eternia to become He-Man and fight Sacha Baron Cohen’s Skeletor.
The 1987 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe had Skeletor played by the great Frank Langella, albeit hidden behind a rather silly rubber mask. It’s entirely possible that even though the makeup will be better, we also won’t see much of Sacha Baron Cohen’s face in the movie.
Travis Knight is set to direct the Masters of the Universe reboot movie for Mattel. He’s best known for his work directing stop-action movies like Kubo and the Two Strings, but he also directed Bumblebee. It’s easy to imagine Bumblebee as the right tone to set for a good He-Man movie.
