Variety bring us the troubling news today that Warner Bros. and Mattel’s hilarious plans for a live-action movie reboot of Masters of the Universe have once again been put on ice. Apparently the studio and toy company couldn’t agree on the direction of the film, which Joel Silver has been developing for two years, and they’ve agreed to let the project lapse, allowing Mattel and director John Stevenson to pitch it to another studio.
So how the heck does a movie based on an eighties toy franchise fall apart twice over creative differences? We thought studios shot these things in a weekend, then sat back and watched while theatergoers flung money into their bank accounts. A screenplay for Grayskull: Masters of the Universe earned rave blog reviews last year, which means it’s possibly the first proposed movie of its kind to actually have a screenplay. So what really happened here? We’d guess that smarter heads prevailed and simply decided not to make a movie that in all probability would be awful, if only such a theory didn’t seem so outlandish. (Mattel’s plans to make a Hot Wheels film with WB are still full steam ahead, says Variety.)
No He-Man for WB, Mattel [BFDealMemo/Variety]