By the power of Grayskull… is it REALLY gonna happen? It seems so, but who knows? What we do know is that the 1980’s cartoon was extremely popular back then and today. It spawned a huge line of action figures and toys, the infamous cult classic live-action movie starring Dolph Lundgren in 1987, another animated series in 2002 that some even venture to call better than the original and even a video game in 2005. Now Warner Bros wants to bring the magic back, having optioned the rights and the project is undergoing multiple rewrites.
Assuming director John Stevenson (‘Kung Fu Panda’) actually does get his chance to tackle this hot commodity, he’ll have lots of source material to pull from. The original animated series was packed full of cool characters on the planet Eternia, although it seems the new film may end up suffering one of the same drawbacks of the original live-action attempt, in that it may end up taking place on Earth, rather than Prince Adam’s planet.
That leads me to the first obstacle if casting the film… who will play Prince Adam, whom of course, becomes the powerful He-Man by summoning the powers of Grayskull, his magical castle. Obviously, “certain” people would actually wish for Dolph Lundgren to be recast, but most of us sane people find that unwarranted and unlikely. Many professional wrestlers have been thrown into the casting rumor mill along with the regular celebrity names, such as Brad Pitt. However, I find the most interesting picks are always the relative unknowns or budding stars. Personally, my vote currently goes to Josh Holloway…
The best part of discussing Masters of the Universe, or the newly titled ‘Grayskull’ as it turns out, are the characters both good and bad. For anyone worth their salt in 80’s cartoon fandom, the arch-nemesis of He-Man MUST be in the movie… that being Skeletor. In the 1987 film, Frank Langella was oddly cast as the maniacal, evil blue bodybuilder with a skull for a head. While he was grossly miscast with terribly rendered special FX and terribly adapted, Langella still did a decent job, but who could truly pull off that role?
Why stop there? How about Evil-Lyn? One of the names I’ve seen thrown about is Anne Hathaway. She’d be nice to look at and can act well enough, but is she right? Take the female element a bit further and consider who would play Teela? Heck, could you even work She-Ra into the script? Well, maybe not. How about the supporting characters? Man-at-Arms, Beastman or even Trap Jaw… although, many of these Master of the Universe characters have a difficult-to-translate-to-live-action element to them. Orco is CGI all the way!
Sure, this is a movie that’s a ways off, if it happens at all, but go ahead and play the game… it’s part of the fun! Let us know who you’d like to see in these roles. Who do you think would best fill the goldie locks and wield the mighty sword? And, as always, if you have any ideas for future Fantasy Casts, shoot us an email with your ideas. You can find all of our email addresses right here!
