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by Zach Oat October 17, 2008 3:19 PM

He-Man fans have been jerked around for a long time -- pretty much since day one, in fact. They grew to love the early '80s toy line and cartoon despite conflicting backstories, then were rewarded with a fairly ridiculous live-action movie in 1987. Toymaker Mattel's attempt to remake it as a BSG-style sci-fi epic in 1990 was a failure on multiple levels, while its creatively successful 2002 revamp was merely a failure at retail and was prematurely canceled. Last week, fans were anticipating both a new live-action movie from Warner Bros. as well as a new, classically styled toy line; this week, they'll have to content themselves with the toys, because the movie is apparently deader than King Grayskull. ...If you didn't get that reference, then you probably don't care either way.

The screenplay, which had been written by Justin Marks (writer of the upcoming Street Fighter movie, as well as Voltron and Green Arrow), received positive reviews from Latino Review, who broke the bad news yesterday. Apparently, the thirtysomething producers at Warners who had championed the film have moved on from the company, and their replacements don't seem to care as much. Needless to say, Mattel is kinda pissed-off, since they've been planning their long-term He-strategy for a while now. Hopefully, they won't cancel their old-school toys, which look pretty sweet, and they'll be able to get back the movie rights and take it to another studio, since Warner Bros. was pretty stupid to cancel it. Yeah, that's right, stupid.

After all, look at what He-Man has going for it! A popular 1980s property with over 25 years of fans, and multiple TV incarnations, like Transformers? Check. A fantastical, ab-tastical mash-up of gladiators, barbarians and monsters, like 300? Check. A rich, magical universe with sequel potential, like Harry Potter? Check. ...Of course, it also has the bloated albatross that is the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie, starring Dolph Lundgren. Hey, if the Punisher can recover from Dolph Lundgren, He-Man should definitely be able to.

TAGS: canceled, Dolph Lundgren, He-Man, Justin Marks, Masters of the Universe, Warner Bros.

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