In news that has no right to be as exciting as it is, a new live-action adaptation of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe could be heading our way. For real, this time.
A live-action adaptation has been teased for what feels like a lifetime already, and not too long ago, Netflix decided to break fans’ hearts by cancelling a Masters of the Universe project after already spending $30 million on its development.
But now it seems like that very project will live to see the light of day, only this time, it will be heading to Amazon MGM Studios instead of Netflix.
As of writing this, Amazon is officially in talks to take over the scrapped project, and if they do, it will be completed by Adam and Aaron Nee, the writing and directing team behind The Lost City.
Amazon also announced that should they take over the project, Kyle Allen will still be attached to star as He-Man, and the film’s budget will be increased to around $170 million with a theatrical release planned.
Although not much was known about the cancelled project, the story for the film was teased about having focused on an orphan named Adam who discovers he is a prince destined to be the saviour of a faraway land who must quickly learn of his power and the importance of saving his true home from an evil force.
The project’s director, Aaron Nee, previously shared that things would be kept wild and crazy like the original animated series:
“It’s a wild, crazy property, and we wanted to keep it wild and crazy. Like, you had just wacky characters, but what we also wanted to keep is that, what it was to experience those toys and those cartoons as kids.
Whereas kids, we took it completely seriously, and trying to tap into, what was it that it was making us feel then? That empowerment that made us feel, and that sort of wide-eyed wonder of the incredible things that can happen, and the incredible worlds that you can encounter.
And so we want that wildness, but also the sort of reverence and love of it, that we saw it with through the filter of our child eyes.
Masters of the Universe wasn’t just huge successes because of clever marketing or something like that. It was tapping into something primal, something fundamental about us as kids.
Whether the creators did it accidentally or out of brilliance doesn’t matter. It was tapping into something. And that’s what we are trying to hold onto is, what was that sparking inside of us, as kids?
And so, we want that, at its core, that very basic human connection that we were feeling while not going, ‘Well, we’re grownups now. So we can’t really have a character named Ram-Man, we can’t really have Fisto.’ Instead, it’s like, ‘No, we’re going to have that.’ How do you pull in like all of the kind of just wildness and craziness, but do it with love and affection?”