After almost 40 years and four different animated series, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe return to the big screen. The film is directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings, Bumblebee) and stars Nicholas Galitzine (Legends, Purple Hearts) as the titular character of Prince Adam, AKA He-Man. However, the world of Eternia has gone through many attempts at adaptation spanning years of development hell, cancellation, and directions so wildly different that it will make your head spin!
The first attempt at adapting the Masters of the Universe brand came in 1987 with Masters of the Universe: The Motion Picture, a film that is both a cult classic and known as one of the greatest cinematic failures of all time with Variety describing it as “a colossal bore” and The Weekly Planet podcast summarizing it as “Star Wars until the budget ran out.” If you believe that this may be an exaggeration, let me remind you that this is one of the projects responsible for the closure of Cannon Films and that lead actor Dolph Lundgren has described it as his “lowest point as an actor,” even though he has shown interest in returning to the franchise. The film was supposed to receive a much cheaper sequel, but that was cancelled.
Efforts to reboot He-Man came years later, beginning with rumors of a film directed by Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo (A Better Tomorrow, Face/Off) in 2007, which ended up in the same state as Woo’s rumored Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot; it never happened. In 2009, the rights were taken over by Sony Pictures, with Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, and Steve Tisch hired to develop the project. The film continued development, with director John Stevenson and screenwriter Evan Daugherty becoming attached to the project. Later, in 2012, reports from Deadline claimed that Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, Wicked) was in talks to direct a more serious origin story, and Dolph Lundgren revealed in an interview with IGN that he was open to playing King Randor, the father of He-Man. In October, it was announced by The Hollywood Reporter that Terry Rossio (The Mask of Zorro, Shrek) would scribe the movie and that Chu was in fact not going to direct the film. In January 2014, the development of the film began to simultaneously pick up and slow down, as 11 different directors and a directing duo were named as frontrunners for the movie, ranging from Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Breaking Bad) to Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, 21 Jump Street). In the following month, it was documented that Mike Cahill, Jeff Wadlow, Harald Zwart, and Chris McKay were on the shortlist of directors. Directors and writers continued to shift around, with Joseph “McG” Nichol and David S. Goyer being attached to an epic, Lord of the Rings-sized project, before being rejected for the massive budget it would require. The progress of the film was so slow that only two actors had been brought up throughout the entire process, with Kellen Lutz (Immortals, Twilight), Noah Centineo (Black Adam, The Recruit), and Kyle Allen (The Path, West Side Story) being offered the role of He-Man. Unfortunately, Netflix had acquired the rights from Sony before any film could be created, and their own adaptation was cancelled due to budgetary concerns.
After the prospect of He-Man getting a new, high-budget feature film seemed to be doomed, a new hero came to save this project from the depths of development hell: Amazon MGM Studios, which hired Travis Knight to direct and Chris Butler to rewrite the previous screenplay. Weeks after the acquisition, Nicholas Galitzine was officially cast as He-Man. In the following months and leading into 2025, the cast grew with Camila Mendes as Teela, Alison Brie as Evil-Lyn, Idris Elba as Man-At-Arms, Morena Baccarin as The Sorceress, Kirsten Wiig as Roboto, and many more joined. One of the biggest and by far the most controversial casting in this list is Jared Leto as the main villain, Skeletor. With decades’ worth of absolutely abhorrent and reprehensible allegations and rumors under his belt, Leto is the last person people want in this movie. On the bright side, they can easily recast the role for future films, and the only time it will really be Leto involves his face being painted blue and getting melted off by acid.
After taking this long, there’s only one thing we can hope for: That this movie is at least enjoyable and somewhat sensible. The first trailer has gotten almost universal praise for adapting the source material to near perfection. Director Travis Knight describes it best in his interview with Empire Magazine: “There’s an inherent silliness to it… I think it’s a virtue.” The one complaint people have had is from grifters who whine about pronouns being on a nameplate for a character called ‘He-Man’.
