David Goyer has been talking about his attempt to bring Masters Of The Universe back to the movies.
Sony has been trying to get a big-screen He-Man adaptation going for over a decade now, without a great deal of success. Whilst Netflix’s animated take on the character hits our screens today, a cinematic return for the musclebound protector of Castle Greyskull, seems as far away as ever.
One notable creator who took a swing at the character was David Goyer, who wrote a script and was reportedly in line to direct as recently as 2017. Ultimately, that didn’t happen, but Goyer has bee chatting about what his version of Masters of the Universe would have looked like.
“I legitimately liked the script that we did”, he said. “What I liked the most about it was that it was mostly about a friendship between He-Man and Battle Cat. The idea was there had always been He-Men and different recipients of the Sword of Power, and that Battle Cat had always served at their side. And this was a new He-Man that Battle Cat and many people didn’t think was worthy of the sword. So it was a story of the character earning the sword but, more importantly, earning the friendship of Battle Cat, who just thought this guy was a lightweight. I really liked it. I thought it was a fun story. There was a lot of humour in it, and it creeps up on you because Battle Cat sort of grudgingly accepts him, and it’s Battle Cat’s acceptance of He-Man that gave this version of the story heart.”
A story based essentially on ‘a man and his dog’ (although the dog is actually a cat, and a warrior cat at that) sounds like it could have worked, but for whatever reason, Sony passed. As such, Goyer joins Jon M Chu, McG and others as filmmakers who weren’t able to get a He-Man film into production. Noah Centino was the latest director to push the project back in 2019, but the film’s March 2021 release date was eventually pulled from the schedule and nothing has been announced since. The strong rumour is that Sony has sold the project onto Netflix.
Still, there’s always the 1987 Dolph Lundgren film and Kevin Smith’s Netflix cartoon, which drops today. Goyer’s interview with The Hollywood Reporter is here, if you want to read more.
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