Growing up, I was a fan of two major toy properties: He-Man and M.A.S.K. Sure, G.I. Joe was all right, but He-Man was my early-morning cartoon jam. Hell, as a kid, I even liked that bizarrely awful movie they made, and now with yet another attempt to revamp the franchise on the horizon, it looks like my childhood self will have to fork over ten bucks to see the new one. And so...I'll miss you, Dolph Lundgren, and whatever the hell that little keymaster thing was.
According to Heat Vision, Mike Finch and Alex Litvak, the
writers behind the upcoming Predators reboot, have signed on to script
an adaptation of Masters of the
Universe for Columbia Pictures. Initially set up at Warner Brothers,
Columbia had snatched away the rights after several failed attempts to get the
project up and running. Heat Vision reports:
The addition of the
rising writers is the first major move on the property and signals the project
is being rebuilt from the ground up. While at Warners, "Masters" went
through several writers and in latter stages had John Stevenson, who co-helmed
"Kung Fu Panda," attached to direct. Getting the go-ahead to tackle
any major toy-brand film can be tricky. Depending on the property, writers and
directors need to get a thumbs-up from the studio, which then has to win
approval from the toy company. In the case of "Masters," Mattel has
story approval.
In their pitch, the
scribes attempted to balance a treatment that would convince the studio it was
cinematic and keep the toy company satisfied that its characters were being
portrayed appropriately.
That strikes me as funny, quite frankly, because short of
putting He-Man, She-Ra and Skeletor in a full-on, inter-species gang-bang with
Orko and Battlecat, how are you really going to inappropriately portray He-Man? It's a pretty simple recipe. The
guy's a warrior; he uses the power of Greyskull; he fights the guy in the
skeleton costume; the end...
