Director John Stevenson is The Man for He-Man

Everything old is new again. The start-and-stop momentum of Masters of the Universe is starting again, with Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver signing John Stevenson to direct, according to Variety. Uh...John Stevenson? Yes. You're probably asking, "The same John Stevenson who co-directed Kung Fu Panda?" Yep. You nailed it. Gold star! Like all of us of a certain age, we remember the first He-Man movie, released in the late 1980s. It starred Dolph Lundgren and Oscar nominee Frank Langella, and even as a teenager, I know the movie was shit. So did Stevenson, apparently, who changed his tune about directing the relaunch when Mattel showed him the secret He-Man vault.

"There was this locked bunker that you had to be escorted into. It was filled with art, some generated by the Mattel artists, and I looked around, and said, 'I get it.' We started formulating a specific vision for costumes, creatures, architecture, and the creation of a mythology and look for a whole world we'll create."

Like everything else, there will be a tipping point these 80s toy properties reach, after which there's simply no point to pursue them. But until then, it's hard to blame the studios for investing the resources to go for the familiar. It worked for Transformers, it will probably work for G.I. Joe, and who knows? It could work for He-Man, too.

Comments

[Will]

Dude, it takes some real nards to post your old Halloween photos like that!

Awesome!

[Orinn]

He-man, no not He-man. Burly man riding a tiger and wearing little else other then a giant sword doesn't really work anymore. Giant robots that transform into cars, that will never get old.