In a shocking announcement during a Masters of the Universe convention over the weekend, the director of DOGMA, MALLRATS and other movies that people either love or hate was announced as heading up a brand new He-Man animated series on Netflix.
The new series, called MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATION, will pick up where the original 1980s series left off. According to the streaming service, the show will tell “the epic tale of what may be He-Man and Skeletor’s final battle.”
Smith and Marc Bernardin, who co-host the podcast “Fatman Beyond,” have been dropping hints about a project they’d been working on, based on a beloved property, for a few months now without wanting to give too much away. Bernardin is part of Smith’s team on the show, along with Tim Sheridan, Eric Carrasco and Diya Mishra.
During his podcasts with Bernardin, where they discussed the project without naming it, Smith was full of praise for the team with whom he worked to develop the show. He noted on more than one occasion that the show’s producers wanted this to feel like a show written by Kevin Smith, so he shouldn’t feel the need to rein himself in or try to make the characters sound like they did 35 years ago. How people feel about Smith will likely determine if they think that’s a good idea or not.
As a fan of Smith’s work, and a child of the 1980s who still has all of his original Masters of the Universe figures packed away somewhere, I think the news is exciting. Outside of a few COMIC BOOK series (which I thought have been pretty good), the He-Man property has lain pretty dormant since Cartoon Network’s three-season reboot from 2002. The reboot series updated a lot about the original characters, giving them a depth that was absent from the 1980s series. The 2002 series never got to finish its third-season story, and its premature cancellation left a lot of people – myself included – wanting more.
Speaking of the comics, DC Comics also announced this weekend a new miniseries, called HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE MULTIVERSE, a six-issue series that debuts in November.
Of course, movie versions of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe have been rumored for a while. Despite the announcement of the new Kevin Smith series, Sony is apparently still working on a new FEATURE FILM, though not a lot of news has been released about that, either. Whatever happens with the new movie, it can’t possibly be as bad (or as so-bad-it’s-good) as the one from 1987…
And how no one has bothered to create an epic video game world centered around Eternia is beyond me.
As far as I’m concerned, this is exciting news. It’s tempered a bit by the fact that Netflix didn’t bother to announce a whole lot of details about the new series. We don’t know when it will debut or how many episodes the series will be or even any of the potential voice cast for the show. But knowing that it’s coming warms the heart of little kid me. Hopefully, we get some more details on the series soon!