Netflix reportedly wasted an estimated $30 million on a live-action He-Man movie before the woke streaming service decided to axe the project as it scales back production spending.
Masters of the Universe, which far-left Netflix was developing in partnership with Mattel, was facing a ballooning budget expected to exceed $200 million when the streamer pulled the plug, according to a Variety report. The company had already sunk $30 million into the movie’s pre-production.
The abandoned movie is the latest sign of turbulence for woke Netflix, which is in the process of reining in its famously spendthrift habits after seeing subscriptions tank last year by more than one million customers. The streamer lost nearly $50 billion in market capitalization amid the catastrophic subscriber exodus.
“Masters of the Universe,” a live-action movie based on He-Man and a slew of other popular Mattel toys, is officially dead at Netflix, according to multiple Variety sources. https://t.co/4NPS1VBlh3 pic.twitter.com/au81gde3ns
— Variety (@Variety) July 18, 2023
Executives responded by enacting company-wide layoffs and vowing to keep a tighter grip on pursestrings, including cutting budgets by as much as 25 percent.
Sources close to Masters of the Universe told Variety that producers made a peace offering of a $180 million budget, but the streamer refused to spend more than $150 million on the movie. The project would have starred West Side Story (2021) actor Kyle Allen as He-Man.
With its aggressively woke content, including programming from Barack and Michelle Obama, Netflix has alienated large swaths of its subscriber base who have grown increasingly fed up with the streamer’s progressive moralizing.
Even after last year’s unprecedented subscriber losses, a survey found 25 percent of remaining customers planned to cancel their subscriptions.
It remains unclear how woke Netflix’s live-action He-Man movie would have been. But the streamer’s animated He-Man series provides some clues.
Now in its third season, Masters of the Universe: Revelation is a feminist revision of Mattel’s beloved action-fantasy world for boys — with the female Teela, not He-Man, emerging as the series protagonist.
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