http://www.geekscape.net/sdcc-panel-rou ... e-man-more
The panel, once again moderated by Free Enterprise’s Robert Meyer Burnett, featured people like Roger Lay, Jr. (director/producer) a He-Man kid like me growing up, Gary Goddard (director of the 1987 film) and Jack and Leslie Wadsworth (live-action He Man and She Ra from the Masters of the Universe: Power Tour), Jack and Leslie, two body buiders/stunt people who met at the Universal Studios Conan/Red Sonja show in the early 80′s and got married, were He-Man and She-Ra for the nation wide Power Tour (I never got to go this; this panel brought back memories of being an angry 11 year old) Both happily married still, they seem happy about their time in Eternia, and even kept their prop swords, which they brought to the panel (awww) The Power Tour still apparently has the house record for the most consecutive sold out shows at Radio City Music Hall, nineteen performances. Crazy. But that’s how big He-Man was for about five years or so.
Most fascinating were the stories of making the 1987 live action He-Man movie, which is celebrating its 25th Anniversarry this year. Director Gary Goddard was on hand, and he talked about how both Cannon Films and Mattel desperatley needed this movie to be a hit; Cannon had sunk every last dime the company had on the movie, and were on the verge of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, in 1987 the toy sales for the line plummeted, and Mattel needed the movie to be a hit to justify continuing the line (the fact that the cartoon had ended making new episodes didn’t seem to occur to anyone for the toy line’s decline baffled me) Gary Goddard, a highly successful creator of theme park attractions going back to EPCOT and as recently as Spider-Man at Universal Florida, was brought in to direct what would be his only big screen feature film. What he ended up with was a movie with the largest Hollywood sound stage in forty years (Castle Greyskull) and then the rest shot in downtown Whittier, CA. on the cheap. According to Goddard, eveyone in Hollywood wanted to see the massive Greyskull set, including Michael Jackson, who asked if he could walk on the Grayskull throne room.
The movie ended up being a giant clusterfuck, Cannon folded and Mattel cancelled the line all together. Twenty five years later though, the Masters brand still strikes a chord in Generation X kids like me, and judging from how well the retro style Masters of the Universe Classics line is selling for Mattel to twenty and thirty somethings, I fully expect to see the line come back one day for real. In the meantime, Toy Masters is making its premiere at the Montreal Film Fest next month, and I can only hope real distribution comes soon, as this panel made me dying to see the final product even more.
