Any movie with as troubled a production as the new Masters of the Universe is bound to
foster a whole mythology of rumors and speculation.
And by the power of Grayskull, here's all the latest on the future adventures of Eternia's
greatest warrior.
In early 2019, the final slate of production staff for Masters of the Universe finally
began to gel.
David Goyer, who'd earlier delivered a script treatment for the new movie and was briefly
in talks to direct, opted to serve as executive producer on the project instead due to other
directorial commitments.
In his place, the studio hired the directorial sibling duo Adam and Aaron Nee, best known
for the comedy Band of Robbers, a modernized pseudo-sequel take on The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn with its main characters portrayed as adults.
Finally, screenwriters Art Markum and Matt Holloway, best known for their credits on
the original Iron Man, have taken a fresh pass at the script.
With Goyer and at least four other known writers having made their own attempts at cracking
the story, it's not yet clear how much credit any of them will receive, or if any of their
previous ideas will make it into the final product.
Goyer's script in particular appeared to have been relatively close to completion, but Markum
and Holloway still reportedly started over from scratch.
"You are all aware of the penalty for failure."
You can't have a Masters of the Universe movie without a star to play He-Man, and in 2019,
the new version found its lead in Noah Centineo.
Arguably best known for his work in the Netflix rom-com To All the Boys I've Loved Before,
Centineo's casting marks more than a slight departure from his predecessor in the role,
Dolph Lundgren.
This appears to be an intentional move, when asked about his preparation for the project,
Centineo teased:
"It's a new universe…The Nee brothers, Adam and Aaron Nee, they're directing it, and they're
the filmmakers in charge of the story, and they are doing one hell of a job developing
the world and all these things."
A new perspective on the characters and their setting is to be expected from any reboot
of a well-known property, but, as is always the case, fans were quick to offer their opinions
on Centineo's casting.
Critical Twitter users called the young actor everything from "a fine actor, but a poor
choice for He-Man" to downright "pathetic."
Of course, Centineo is far from the first star to suffer the sting of preemptive scorn,
even Heath Ledger's initial casting as the Joker was met with outright uproar from comic
fans.
"I thought my jokes were bad."
Dolph Lundgren played the original live-action He-Man in the 1987 Masters of the Universe
film, and in an era of pop culture callbacks and novelty cameos, there's no doubt that
many longtime fans would appreciate an appearance in the reboot.
At one point, Lundgren was indeed actively sought after for the movie, with previous
director Jon Chu having publicly expressed an interest in including him in some way.
This interest, however, doesn't appear to have ever brought about any serious negotiation
towards casting Lundgren under Chu's direction, and Chu departed the project in 2014.
Lundgren himself has in the past expressed his own interest in being involved.
In 2012, he called the reboot:
"...a good idea…[but] I wouldn't want to take my shirt off again for three months."
Lundgren then suggested that he could play He-Man's father, King Randor, instead.
Of course, that was some time ago, but Lundgren is still very much around and enjoying a healthy
bump in his celebrity status, having recently appeared in Aquaman and having reprised his
famous role as Ivan Drago in Creed II.
Getting him involved with Masters of the Universe would be a fun way to hark back to the franchise's
history that older He-Man fans are bound to love.
"I have the power!"
When a film such as Masters of the Universe struggles to find its feet, movie studios
tend to keep production updates very low-key because of the inevitable fragility of the
pre-production process.
As such, not much is known about how this new film will actually look.
But a few choice teasers have reached fans nonetheless.
The only tantalizing peeks we've yet seen of the new movie's visual conceptualization
came from yet another of the movie's former directors, Jeff Wadlow.
Wadlow, who was on the project from 2014 to 2017, commissioned prosthetics designer and
sculptor Mario Torres to mock up some busts of two secondary characters from Eternia:
Beast-man and Ram-man.
Torres later shared images of these sculptures on his Instagram account, revealing designs
that seemed to indicate a more realistic and gritty film than the 1987 original.
At 2019's annual Masters of the Universe fan convention, Power-Con, director Kevin Smith
was announced as a last-minute Guest of Honor just days before the con began.
This appearance ended up being a surprise reveal for a brand-new animated Masters of
the Universe limited series for Netflix entitled Masters of the Universe: Revelation, with
Smith on board as executive producer.
Very little has been revealed about the project so far, but what is known is that the story
is set to resolve unfinished business from the original animated series' two seasons,
which ran from 1983 to 1985.
Currently, there is no announced release date, but the series will be produced by the Powerhouse
animation studio, which was also behind Netflix's Castlevania animated series.
For the moment, there's no official word and no reason to believe that this modern return
to the animated source material has anything to do with Sony's live-action feature film.
It is clear, however, that He-Man's future is finally heating up, after a very long and
very cold break for longtime fans of the franchise.
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