Netflix Pulls the Plug on Live-Action MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Reboot

Netflix Abandons Live Action He-Man Movie

A $30 million live-action Masters of the Universe movie has surprisingly been cancelled by the folks over at Netflix.

While the female heavy Barbie is ready to sail into a nice box-office run in theaters, a male heavy Mattel property, Masters of the Universe, is getting cancelled over at Netflix after $30 million in pre-production costs were spent. This news may surprise some but the 1987 Masters of the Universe live-action movie helped put its studio, Cannon, on the fritz back then. That Dolph Lundgren movie earned a deadly $17 million and fizzled with critics entirely. It currently holds a terrible 22% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Netflix may have been afraid of another bomb with their potentially expensive reboot.

That doesn’t mean Mattel doesn’t have faith in a Masters of the Universe/He-Man reboot. It just might be something more theatrical as opposed to something that goes straight to streaming. Kyle Allen was cast as He-Man for the Netflix picture but someone who is a bigger star would probably be needed for a theatrical version of this property which was based on a popular toy line of action figures and accessories from the 1980’s.

Attached to the cancelled Netflix movie were acclaimed The Lost City directors, Adam and Aaron Nee but the budget ballooned beyond a reasonable doubt and it was, as a result, deemed a “hard to be profitable” situation for Netflix. Whereas certain comic books have been successful based on the Masters of the Universe characters, it seems quite unlikely that a straight-to-streaming movie with a huge budget would be the way to go for this particular reboot.

Netflix had yearned to keep their He-Man project in the $150 million range but due to potentially much higher costs, Netflix didn’t want to cut their nose off to spite their face. Netflix thus took a $30 million loss which meant pulling the plug on the live-action project altogether was the best bet.

While the female friendly Barbie sells popcorn and tickets this weekend and reels audiences of all ages in, Mattel may want to think about a way to bring the macho He-Man back to the big screen in a more lucrative way than a large budgeted Netflix straight-to-streaming movie. Casting would be a pivotal part of deciding whether or not a Masters of the Universe movie would even be worth it. An Oscar winner or nominee as He-Man would certainly create more interest in the reboot and a big name director could certainly help the situation immensely. Perhaps, a good script could also be essential too in making this a project worth happening.

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