MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (Gary Goddard, 1987)

[Jox]

A great piece on He-Man's original backstory
https://battleram.wordpress.com/2016/11 ... ungle-man/

[Jox]

[Jox]

An sad update on the "release" of TOY MASTERS: HOW HE-MAN AND MATTEL CONQUERED THE UNIVERSE, the documentary started by by Corey Landis and Roger Lay Jr over 5 years ago:

It's become increasingly clear that our movie is not going to be able to be released officially--not because of lack of interest or offers, but because of internal, personal issues. The plan is to offer the movie for free in the near future. So, thanks for hanging in there, and apologies that there won't be a shiny Blu-Ray release. But our pain is your gain; you'll soon be able to stream our film for free. Stay tuned, and thanks again.

It's been the best of times, it's been the worst of times. Roger and I had an amazing time doing this. And we are very proud of the result. It's also been a learning experience, and a very painful one. Ultimately we just wanted to make a good film that people will get to see, and I think we still will be able to do that.

[savagesketch]

I'm curious (like many others are I'd imagine) what the "internal" and "personal" issues are...? Jox, in your experience in the business/industry, what could this possibly mean? And how could it lead to the abandonment of an official release? And why would dumping it to be streamed for free be a beneficial option? Thanks for any insight.

[Jox]

There could be a number of reasons and I guess they understandably prefer not to let the issues known or gossiped about so I won't speculate.

In that situation or a similar ones the documentary could be kept under wraps forever (although it was shown at a festival or two already) and never be unleashed. But they made a choice to show it for free (because their issues obviously prevent them to charge for it) anyway probably because as fans themselves they were making it for fans and wanted to share it, and also because they worked so hard and so long on it that it would be even more sad if they kept it to themselves. It's not "beneficial" financially for sure and it seems they can't make it that in any way, but at least it's out there. My two cents.

[savagesketch]

I can't help but wonder if the other MOTU documentary that was crowdfunded has anything to do with this...

[Jox]

I don't think so because TOY MASTERS was struggling getting released way before the new doc got started. The two have different approaches so there's room both both.

What I'm looking forward to in the meantime is Brian Baer's book coming out next next year. It will be largely tackling the movie (which was the starting point but the publisher wanted to aim larger (with the toys, cartoon etc)...

[Jox]

Someone dared compare MOTU with STARSHIP TROOPERS

PINNLAND EMPIRE ‏@PINNLAND_EMPIRE
Masters Of The Universe/Starship Troopers

#sidebyside #PaulVerhoeven #heman #DolphLundgren @Dolph_Lundgren #verhoeven #movies @filmgrabber

[Jox]

Update on the POWER OF GRAYSKULL documentary

After last week's wrestling with that massive 5+ hour rough assembly, we've finally come up with a very nice 2+ hour cut that we'll thicken up even more with the addition of our amazing B roll.
We've got a great, very rich story here, and although we there will ALWAYS be more people we could go out and corral into an interview, it wouldn't necessarily make that story any better.
As we head into this next phase - digging through hours and hours of sweet B roll - we'll dip back into that 2+ hour cut and see what added tweaking can be done.
As I write this, Isaac and crew are setting up for some transition and credit sequence shots, which will hopefully come out as a series of intricate moving shots in a very cool setting with some very nice props...
Stay tuned here for pics!
Thanks,
Randall

For French readers, a retro video about issue #50 of the mythic Mad Movies magazine largely dedicated to MASTERS even though they pretty much thought it was lame (a publicity deal with Cannon France?)
http://www.mad-movies.com/fr/module/999 ... tromad-n50


(I realize both Mad and L'Ecran Fantastique chose to have Skeletor more prominently on their covers than He-Man)

[Jox]

R.I.P. Christopher Pearce, head of production at Cannon Films who later co-led the company with Yoram Globus from 1990 to 1993 (after Menahem Golan had left)
http://variety.com/2016/film/news/chris ... 201937470/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/c ... -73-954411

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

Chris Pearce was Cannon's International Man of Mystery. He was the most difficult interviewee to locate for ELECTRIC BOOGALOO - and many Cannon ex-employees told us he was dead. Instead we discovered he was living in Florida. He was incredibly generous to our production - and gave us a frank and illuminating interview. We didn't know at the time he was battling cancer. Sadly, a couple of days ago he lost that fight.

https://www.facebook.com/ElectricBoogal ... 3100115971

[Jox]

Fans of Power Episode 58 - WILLIAM STOUT! (podcast interview, 54 mins)
http://www.hemanworld.com/2016/12/fans- ... interview/
https://vglosers.podbean.com/e/fans-of- ... db1b3de206




EDIT:
Some rare Moebius' sketches from his out of print book "Made in L.A."

[Jox]

THE ART OF HE-MAN AND MOTU (in which a chapter is devoted to the film with a brief -email?- interview of Dolph) chronicled and reviewed by the great "Battle Ram" blog
https://battleram.wordpress.com/2016/12 ... erse-2015/

[Jox]

For those who haven't seen the Starlog article/interview on Dolph yet, the MOTU Movie blog posted it:
http://www.motumovie.com/2016/12/starlo ... ticle.html

[Jox]

Character created for the film, Blade is featured on a vintage MOTU wrapping paper

[Jox]

French promotional foldout flyer
http://www.he-man.org/cartoon/document.php?id=51&mid=45
(click for high-res)