Thirty-nine years after Dolph Lundgren raised the Sword of Grayskull, He-Man is back on the big screen. Travis Knight's Masters of the Universe opened in cinemas on 5 June, and the reaction has been as divided as anything the franchise has produced.
What is the new Masters of the Universe about?
The film follows Prince Adam of Eternia, played by Nicholas Galitzine, as he discovers the power of Grayskull and takes on Jared Leto's Skeletor for control of the planet. Camila Mendes is Teela, Idris Elba is Man-At-Arms and Alison Brie plays Evil-Lyn. Knight, whose previous work includes Kubo and the Two Strings and Bumblebee, has said from the start that he wanted a film that loved the 1980s cartoon rather than apologised for it, and that is what he has delivered: bright, knowingly camp, and closer in spirit to the Filmation series than to the darker reboot some fans were hoping for.
How was it received?
The critics were split roughly two to one in its favour. It holds 68% on Rotten Tomatoes across more than 200 reviews, with a Metacritic score of 52. The praise centres on Knight's direction, the cast and the action, with Leto's Skeletor singled out as a gleefully theatrical performance. The complaints are about tone and pace: the humour lands unevenly and the middle hour drags. Audiences graded it a B on CinemaScore, which for a summer tentpole is polite rather than enthusiastic.
The box office was the harder story. On a budget reported at around $200 million, it had taken roughly $109 million worldwide by the end of June, and trade coverage has already filed it among the year's significant disappointments. Amazon MGM describes a sequel as in development, which is the phrase studios use when they have not yet decided.
Why does it matter?
Because Masters of the Universe has spent thirty years as Hollywood's most persistently unmade film. It was announced, cast, recast and cancelled at Warner Bros., Sony and Netflix before Amazon finally got it in front of a camera, and the version that emerged is recognisably the one fans asked for: a faithful Eternia, Skeletor with a face, Castle Grayskull as a real building. That it did not connect with a wider audience says more about the appetite for 1980s toy properties in 2026 than about the film itself. Several reviews make the same observation, that this is the film a ten-year-old in 1985 would have wanted, arriving forty years late.
What comes next for He-Man?
The property is not going anywhere. Mattel's Masterverse toy line continues, Netflix's Revelation and Revolution series proved there is an adult audience for the mythology, and the collectibles market for the classic designs has never been stronger. Whether the film gets a sequel depends less on its box office than on how it performs once it reaches Prime Video, where Amazon can measure the audience it actually cares about. We would not bet against a second film, but we would not bet on one either.
Halidom's Masters of the Universe editions cover both the film and the classic line.