Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver are working with Mattel to turn “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” into a live-action film, reports Variety. Justin Marks is set to write the script. Silver will produce.
He-Man was born as a Mattel action figure, and the toymaker created an animated series in hopes of selling dolls. The series became a cult favorite, but the brand was hardly helped by its first big screen incarnation, the campy 1987 flop Masters of the Universe that starred Dolph Lundgren as the title character and Frank Langella as his nemesis Skeletor.
The franchise has been reimagined by the producer and the writers and pitched to Mattel as a classic good vs. evil battle, using the kind of visual effects strategy employed in 300. A warrior is touted as the last hope of a magical land called Eternia, which is being ravaged by technology and the evil Skeletor.
Many of the characters will be informed by the mythology created in the four different cartoon series done since the 1980s.
