David Goyer's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Film Is Said to Have Been a LORD OF THE RINGS Sized Epic
Art By Gerald Parel
Sony Pictures has been trying to make a Masters of the Universe movie for over a decade. Now it looks like it’s finally going to happen with directors Adam and Aaron Nee (Band of Robbers) with a script written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man, Men in Black: International).
Before they came on board, the movie was being developed by David S. Goyer, and apparently his vision for the film was too expensive for the studio. Apparently his film would have been a Lord of the Rings-sized epic. The new information regarding Goyer’s vision comes from Carlos Huante, a creature designer and former artist at Industrial Light and Magic. He also worked as a runner on the original He-Man cartoon series and was brought in to help help Goyer with Masters of the Universe.
In a recent interview with HN Entertainment, Huante talked about the project saying, “This one was fun and it made the world more fantastic than I thought it could go. It felt arty and fantastical at the same time.” As far as the scale of the project, he explained:
“I’m not going to talk too much about it, I know they’re making it still. But I’ll tell you it was… just the story of Greyskull and that sort of thing and there was some really cool stuff in there. I don’t think they’re gonna make that version. I know they’re not going to. It was like a Lord of The Rings film, it was huge! And there was all kinds of stuff in there, you could have divided up that script into three movies and it would have worked. That’s how big it was.”
Here went on to say it would have been a more fantastical and colorful version of Lord of the Rings:
“It was a more fantastic version of Lord of The Rings, is what I’ll say. It’s a more colorful and fantastical version of Lord of The Rings, but it felt as real as Lord of The Rings. It was very real but very far-out. It was a final return to science fiction fantasy where we’ve only had one: Star Wars.”
That sounds exciting, but there was concept art for the film that was shared online, some of which has since been removed, that I didn’t really care for. One of the images showed the character Teela wearing some kind of mech battle suit. There was nothing really about it that felt like Masters of the Universe.
After seeing that art, I was actually kind of glad that Goyer dropped out as the director. That concept art also actually come from Huante. I never really thought Goyer was the right fit for the project, but now we’ll never know if his vision for it would have actually worked.
I just hope that these new directors deliver something that will actually capture the spirit, style, tone, and awesomeness of the original animated series and action figure line that we all grew up with. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.
Via: /film