TEELA AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Full Short Film Exclusive Premiere!
The full short film Teela and the Masters of the Universe has dropped online, and we were given the exclusive premiere! This film was inspired by the Masters of the Universe franchise, and it turned out to be wicked cool! We shared a teaser trailer for this earlier in the week.
This is such an incredibly fun and action-packed short film, which is a proof-of-concept self-audition tape that was made to highlight the talents of Emily Ashby for the role of Teela in the announced Masters of the Universe film. This is why the film focuses on Teela and not He-Man, and she’s badass in the role! It’s an awesome audition tape!
In the story, “Teela (Emily Ashby), a heroic warrior of Eternia, protects the Sword of Power from three wanderers in an action-packed fight to claim its power for themselves.”
The short film was directed by Jonathan Martin, who shared the following statement explaining the purpose of the short film saying that this is a showcase short film and not an attempt to expand Masters of the Universe canon. He also revealed that it was inspired by and styled after Hong Kong and Jackie Chan action films. Read the full statement below:
"The film was made first and foremost as an ambitious, if not audacious, self tape audition for actress Emily Ashby for the role of Teela in the announced Masters of the Universe film from Netflix. In deciding to do something that has rarely been done, if ever, on such a scale for an audition, it was our hope that it would at least get some buzz and attention for Emily with the role and possibly further consideration from the powers that be.
To that end, the film isn’t a “fan film” in the traditional sense, as its original purpose and story was more of a showcase rather than an unofficial attempt at expanding the MOTU canon. Of course, we absolutely hope fans of MOTU and beyond enjoy it and take it for what it is: a fun time watching a character from MOTU kicking butt and having some fun with the fabled Power Sword. If we approached it like a normal fan film, we would have included more characters, settings, etc. from the world of MOTU than we chose to as well as making it a much longer film more true to the established canon. Instead we created our own trio of original characters for her to do battle with as again, we were creating a showcase for Emily in the role of Teela and bringing such characters as He-Man or Skeletor would have distracted from this purpose - and been a lot more expensive!
As someone who grew up a child of the 80’s, I never imagined I’d actually play in the MOTU sandbox. It would be an incredible pleasure and opportunity to properly dive into world of MOTU in the future, with a lot more money to boot, but if this is all we're able to ever do with it then we’re cool with it. We hope you have as good a time watching the film as we did in taking this big swing out in the middle of nowhere, with limited resources, a tiny crew yet talented crew, and a lot of gumption.
The film was inspired by and styled after Hong Kong and Jackie Chan action films. Our original music was composed by the composer for DC’s Stargirl and Netflix’s Slumberland, Gerrit Wunder, while our sound design was by 10-time Emmy nominated sound editor Patrick Hogan of Cobra Kai and The Umbrella Academy. Hong Kong stunt actor Christian “Kang” Bachini coordinated the stunts.
You can get more information about the project and the talent involved via www.bohemianindustries.com and you can follow us on social media @emilayanneashby and @bohemianindustries. Feel free to reach out any time and we hope you enjoy!”
We hope you enjoy Teela and the Masters of the Universe, which you can watch below!