By the power of Prague Castle!
A live-action reboot of the vintage 1980s Mattel toy line (and Saturday morning cartoon) Masters of the Universe has been in the works for a while now, but the project finally has a start date and filming location according to the February 2019 edition of industry mag Production Weekly.
Directed by Adam and Aaron Nee, the untitled new Masters of the Universe project is slated to shoot in Prague, with a mid-July start to production in the Czech Republic.
The Nee Brothers previously made the 2005 low-budget thriller The Last Romantic, and the 2015 crime comedy Bank of Robbers, starring Kyle Gallner, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Stephen Lang. They replace director McG, who left the project in 2017.
A screenplay for the new Masters of the Universe movie has been rewritten numerous times since Sony acquired the project in 2009, with one version penned by David Goyer (The Dark Knight). The latest script has been written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man, Transformers: The Last Knight, Men in Black: International).
No word on who might be cast in the new version of Masters of the Universe to shoot in Prague this summer, but here’s rooting for Dwayne Johnson in a blonde wig as good-guy lead He-Man, a.k.a. Prince Adam.
Set in the fictional realm of Eternia, the production of Masters of the Universe figures to make use of Prague’s well-equipped studios, but the project could also take advantage of the natural surroundings throughout the Czech Republic.
More than a decade ago, an Arnold Schwarzenegger-led reboot of the Conan the Barbarian franchise was also rumored to film in Prague and other Czech locations; Master of the Universe and especially He-Man have often been accused of cribbing from the classic Robert E. Howard comic.
While Masters of the Universe enjoyed most of its short-lived fame in the mid-1980s, two new reboots of the TV cartoon and an additional line of action figures has brought it back into the spotlight in recent years.
Masters of the Universe was previously turned into a live-action, budget-conscious 1987 feature from Cannon Films starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor.
While Sony currently has the new Masters of the Universe film slated for a December 18, 2019 release date, that will presumably be pushed back given the summer start to production on the project in Prague.