Masters of the Universe didn’t exactly have the theatrical run anyone was hoping for. But He-Man may have found his audience after all, and it didn’t take very long for the conversation around the movie to change.
Since arriving on Prime Video, the movie has taken off in a pretty big way. According to Nielsen data reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Masters of the Universe was the No. 1 streaming title in the United States for the week of July 20-26, with about 1.17 billion minutes watched.
And here’s what makes that number jump out even more: the movie didn’t arrive on Prime Video until July 22. So He-Man managed to reach the top of the entire streaming chart with only five days of viewing included. That’s quite a change from the talk surrounding the movie when it was still trying to find an audience in theaters.
Masters of the Universe gets a second chance
The Masters of the Universe box office numbers weren’t great. The movie earned roughly $114 million worldwide against a reported production budget of around $170 million, which obviously wasn’t the result anyone wanted from a film meant to bring such a recognizable property back to the big screen. For a while, it looked like that might end up being the main story surrounding He-Man’s return.
Then the movie showed up on Prime Video, and people started watching. A lot of them. Maybe some viewers were interested all along but weren’t interested enough to buy a ticket. Maybe they figured they’d wait until it came home. And there are probably plenty of people who simply saw He-Man staring back at them from the Prime Video screen and thought, why not? You remember the cartoon, maybe you had the toys, or maybe you’re just curious to see what Skeletor looks like this time around. At home, that’s enough reason to hit play.
The fun is part of the appeal
One thing the new Masters of the Universe seems to understand is that He-Man doesn’t need to be turned into something he’s never been. There’s always been a strange, colorful and sometimes downright goofy side to this world, and trying to hide all of that would probably take away some of the reason people loved it in the first place.
Nicholas Galitzine plays Prince Adam, who was separated from Eternia when he was young and grew up on Earth. The Sword of Power eventually brings him back home, where he discovers Skeletor has taken control. Jared Leto plays Skeletor, Camila Mendes is Teela and Idris Elba takes on Duncan, better known to fans as Man-At-Arms.
Then you remember who else lives in this universe. Evil-Lyn. Fisto. Ram Man. Battle Cat. Those names tell you pretty quickly what kind of world this is. You can’t fill a movie with characters like that and then pretend you’re making The Dark Knight. Some of the corniness is supposed to be there.
Elba, who knew the franchise growing up, has talked about how campy and out-there those older cartoons could be. Director Travis Knight seems to get that too. There’s a way to take the characters seriously without suddenly acting embarrassed by everything that made He-Man fun. For longtime fans, that may actually be one of the new movie’s biggest strengths.
The original Masters of the Universe found another life
There’s also something familiar about watching the new Masters of the Universe stumble in theaters and then begin finding an audience somewhere else. He-Man has been here before. The 1987 Masters of the Universe starred Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor, with a young Courteney Cox appearing years before Friends made her a household name.
That movie wasn’t a hit either. It made about $17.3 million against a reported $22 million budget, and the reviews weren’t exactly glowing. At the time, there wasn’t much reason to believe people would still be talking about it nearly 40 years later.
But they are. The movie kept turning up on cable. People rented it, bought it and eventually started looking back on it with a lot more affection. Somewhere along the way, the things that once made it easy to mock became part of the reason fans enjoyed it. The costumes, the dialogue, Langella’s huge performance as Skeletor and Lundgren looking like He-Man had somehow walked straight out of a toy package all became part of its charm.
It’s cheesy. Of course it is. That’s also why people remember it.
Streaming may have been the better fit
None of this changes what happened at the box office. A movie reportedly costing around $170 million and earning roughly $114 million worldwide is still going to be viewed as a theatrical disappointment. But the Masters of the Universe streaming numbers add another part to the story. There clearly were people interested in watching the movie. They just didn’t necessarily want to see it in a theater.
That’s an important difference now. The original Masters of the Universe needed years of VHS rentals, cable airings and nostalgia before it became a cult favorite. The new movie can start getting that second chance almost immediately. One month people are talking about what went wrong at the box office, and not long afterward He-Man is sitting at the top of Nielsen’s streaming rankings.
Whether that turns into a lasting second life for the movie remains to be seen, but for now, He-Man has something he didn’t have at the end of his theatrical run: a very big audience watching at home.
Masters of the Universe is now streaming on Prime Video.
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