Netflix Will Not Be Distributing The New 'Masters Of The Universe' Movie

The streamer drops the film after investing at least $30 million in development; Mattel will now shop it to a new distributor

Development hell continues. The upcoming live action He-Man and the Masters of the Universe has taken a bit of regression as Netflix has cancelled the film based on the toyline, and so Mattel is looking for a new distributor.

Netflix picked up the film from Sony in October 2019. In that time, around $30 million was spent on development costs and talent retention, namely lead Kyle Allen and the directors, Adam and Aaron Nee, according to insiders. Others estimate all-in costs for development at double that number. It is one of fourteen films Mattel has announced over the years based on their properties that manages to remain in some stage of development, not counting the imminent release of the Greta Gerwig-directed Barbie.

This latest hurdle seems to be over budget concerns in a journey back to the big screen that started in 2007. The project had even started at Warner Bros., who they ended up partnering with for Barbie. Some of the other directors the film has gone through in all this include Jon M. Chu and McG, while now, the Nees are writing it as well with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings co-writer David Callaham. Initially, the budget came in at $200 million. It’s been said after Netflix’s stock drop of $50 billion in value last spring after investors became concerned about the company’s subscriber losses that the streamer refused to pay more than $150 million for Allen in the role.

The Nee brothers worked with producers to get the budget down in the midst of significant pre-production. Those producers brought back a proposed $180 million budget, but Netflix still balked. In truth, they never handed the movie an official green light. The final budget figure included costs spent on development. There were even considerations to shoot this first film and a proposed sequel simultaneously to theoretically lessen the expense, they added. As much as Netflix loved the brothers, a middle ground could not be reached.

Netflix had felt like a perfectly sensible landing spot for the film, seeing as three animated series based on characters from the franchise have been Netflix original series. The first was 2018’s She-Ra: Princess of Power reboot from DreamWorks Animation, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which for various reasons could not establish connection to He-Man. In 2021, He-Man received a sequel series to the original, Masters of the Universe: Revelation from Kevin Smith with Supergirl’s Chris Wood in the role, as well as a second reboot, a CG He-Man and the Masters of the Universe with Yuri Lowenthal in the role. The latter had a 26 episode season split into three, while a second season of the former, subtitled Revolution, has been announced and added Meg Foster, the 1987 live action film’s Evil-Lyn, as the voice of Motherboard, and Keith David as Hordak. The latter was announced Friday at San Diego Comic-Con. It seems, for now, the best feature-length treatment for the mighty hero was a cameo with archenemy Skeletor in last year’s Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie, where they were both voiced by Alan Oppenheimer.

Source: Variety