The Long & Winding Road To Castle Grayskull: ‘Masters Of The Universe’ Producers On Pic’s Near 18-Year Journey To Screen – Crew Call Podcast
“My 22 year-old daughter just graduated college and my 18-year old film is about to open Friday,” Masters of the Universe producer and Escape Artists’ Jason Blumenthal tells Deadline, “That’s just hard math.” “Jason and I had our busiest…
“My 22 year-old daughter just graduated college and my 18-year old film is about to open Friday,” Masters of the Universe producer and Escape Artists’ Jason Blumenthal tells Deadline, “That’s just hard math.”
“Jason and I had our busiest year ever between DTF St. Louis, Voicemail for Isabelle, David O. Russell’s Madden and the Sorkin movie (The Social Reckoning), but the one constant in our careers for almost 18 years, no matter what else we were doing was Masters of the Universe,” adds Escape Artists and the pic’s producer Todd Black.
The duo along with Masters of the Universe producer and Mattel Studios President and Chief Content Officer, Robbie Brenner tell us about the long rebirth of He-Man and friends.
It all started with late agent Spencer Baumgarten, who during his time at CAA phoned up Black and Blumenthal 17 years ago to tell them that Mattel wasn’t renewing the rights for Masters of the Universe with Warner Bros. The duo had 24 hours to not only wow Mattel that they were the right guys to revive the franchise, but to convince their home base studio, Sony, to buy them. They got the call at 3PM in the afternoon and ran into an office at the Thalberg building where Sony brass Amy Pascal, Doug Belgrad and Michael Lynton were.
“To their credit, they made the deal in less than 24 hours,” said Black.
The last time a He-Man and Skeletor movie was made was in 1987 and by then B-movie studio Cannon. It didn’t do so well, grossing just north of $17M+ stateside and coming out well after the heyday of the toys and the syndicated weekday series which had its first run between 1983-1985. The history of the rights of The Masters of the Universe characters were bifurcated and sold to various studios, i.e. Universal and DreamWorks (for example, She-Ra doesn’t appear in Masters of the Universe). Brenner was key to wrangle most of the characters back for the film. She also walked the project over to Amazon MGM Studios to Courtenay Valenti, head of film (the duo having worked together on Barbie at Warner Bros) after Netflix passed during the pic’s second phase of development. Valenti green light the project as one of her first during her first week on the job at Amazon MGM Studios, receiving the script on Thursday and giving a thumbs up by Sunday.
Nailing the tone was always a challenge, and Black gives props to scribes Aaron and Adam Nee who were able to blend comedy with the campy barbarian beefcake world of He Man.
“The Guardians of the Galaxy hadn’t come out yet, and a movie that brought in comedy with characters — we had no template to look at,” said Black.
The Nees at point were attached as directors when the pic was at Sony and Netflix. Travis Knight, a rabid Masters of the Universe fan, and a filmmaker who was able to bring humor and heart to silent Transformer Bumblebee in his own standalone film, emerged as the top choice to direct.
Kudos to Sony Motion Picture Chairman Tom Rothman for giving the note that He-Man should be a fish out-of-water, spending some time on Earth. “It was a very smart note and we ran with it,” says Black.
Mattel and Escape Artists are teaming again on feature takes of toys, a live-action version of Thomas the Tank Engine and Viewmaster. The trio tease some details toward the end of the podcast.
Listen to our conversation with Brenner, Black and Blumenthal below:
