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Director Travis Knight and screenwriter Chris Butler tell us about their upcoming He-Man movie, Masters of the Universe.

The new He-Man movie, Masters of the Universe, releasing this week, has been directed by Travis Knight and stars Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Adam / He-Man and Jared Leto as Skeletor. The story revolves around Prince Adam, who discovers he is part of a secret legacy as the prince of an alien planet, and must recover a magic sword and return home to protect his kingdom from Skeletor. The first He-Man film was made in 1987, with a sequel which had been planned but got cancelled. Over the years several directors and actors were part of new projects, but none worked out.

Now with the new film finally releasing, it would be interesting to see how its fandom holds out in a world which has been overtaken by the superheroes of Marvel and DC. But how similar to the 1980’s comics shall the new movie be?

“There've been so many iterations over the years, and each time it's been slightly reinvented,” says screenwriter Chris Butler, an animation veteran who has worked on the scripts for ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings and wrote and directed Missing Link. “So, as a fan, I've just taken the bits from each of those iterations that I've liked, really starting with the action figures and the Filmation series, and I've been able to pull that together into something new, hopefully.”

That also meant he and fellow Masters of the Universe screenwriters Aaron Nee and Adam Nee (2022’s The Lost City) and Dave Callaham (2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) wanted to not just tip their hats to the past but also add their own takes to the storyline. “You want to make it your own thing,” Butler adds.