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Rreports show Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe made fair $54m (£40m) worldwide on debut over the weekend, a picture that, while not exactly fatal, is considered a disappointment for a popular film with a budget of more than $200m. Worse, the highly caffeine-fueled 1980s TV show arrived carrying the weight of a major studio reboot and years of nostalgia. On paper at least, his bow looks less like the birth of a movie universe than a treasure trove that other franchises never recover from.
So why does anyone who has done something about this seem happy? “Travis Knight and the entire cast and crew have delivered something truly special,” Amazon MGM’s Kevin Wilson ran for Variety. “This opening is the kind of milestone that validates our distribution strategy — creating awareness and engagement that extends beyond the theater window.”
Meanwhile, Knight has been talking about the possibility of a sequel, after the film appeared to feature He-Man’s twin sister She-Ra in a central role. “With every movie I’ve ever made, I’ve always thought about where the actors are going outside… the boundaries of the movie,” Knight told TechRadar. “You want to tell a unique story, and I think we’ve done that with this movie, but there are things in a lot of stories that didn’t fit that, and She-Ra was one of them.”
“Adora is also a character that carries a lot of weight,” he added. “A lot of people, including myself, love that character, so we want to acknowledge where it can go when given the opportunity to tell more stories.”
So far, so good. But the real question is: why? Opening weekend data shows that nearly 40% of Masters of the Universe audiences were over the age of 45, suggesting that the show’s initial appeal is making the film less popular. This doesn’t go well with the overall performance of the movie, as it may be that the audience has seen it before.
Perhaps, in a world where the giants of the movie studios and the toy makers wield the power once reserved for Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, it doesn’t matter. Masters of the Universe was popular with audiences (Rotten Tomatoes says 87% of moviegoers liked it), and Mattel and Amazon revived a franchise that had never been big since Choppers were the coolest bikes in town.
Read into Wilson’s words at the opening of the film and you might wonder if the words about “total distribution” are really proud of having a movie, a promotional work and a lot of live action to follow. “With the power of Grayskull, I have power!” it’s not – but it has the unknown ring of someone who controls the gates of the wall. When it comes to Prime, Amazon’s algorithms will probably put Masters of the Universe in front of everyone in the world who has a TV, and by the time the second season rolls around in a few years, we will all be wondering how we have lived without this saga on the big screen for almost four decades.
If weak box office doesn’t kill commercial films, this won’t be too difficult – because Masters of the Universe has more than enough to make it difficult. The presence of She-Ra gives the project a chance and Knight’s film is interesting enough. Is the idea that today’s blockbuster can survive on streaming, streaming and entertainment for audiences alone scary?
But even if all of this is true, there’s nothing turning a $54m opening on a $200m-plus budget into being. Top Gun: Maverick. The franchise still needs new fans, not just parents returning to Eternia, and there’s little evidence that Masters of the Universe managed to get them.
