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While there have been many animated shows, comics, and even a previous live-action movie over the last four decades, Masters of the Universe has never been a franchise where mythology is considered sacred. So when it came to adapting Masters of the Universe once again, director Travis Knight didn't feel beholden to previous takes on the character.
Speaking with GamesRadar+ at a press event in London, Knight – who fell in love with He-Man aged eight through the original Filmation cartoon and action figures – addressed the new movie's relationship to continuity in He-Man canon. "It's certainly something I thought about," he says. "But anytime you've got a property like this, a world and a series of characters that have been around for over four decades, the continuity is going to be all over the place. And it is in this property. It's wildly internally inconsistent. So, in the end, you have to decide what you embrace and what you leave behind."
For Knight, that meant embracing the original source. "It was always going back to the toys, the little mini-comics, and the Filmation cartoon from the '80s. That was really what we used as our foundation. We make choices based on where we want these characters to go, but that really was the baseline. We drew from other sources, some aspects of the '87 live-action movie. There were some obscure newspaper comic strips that we pulled from. But the foundational element was the original '82, '83 era."
That much is plain to see in the movie, which faithfully renders He-Man, Skeletor, Teela, Cringer, Man-at-Arms, and the more obscure/bizarre likes of Fisto, Ram-Man and Mekaneck as if they've just leapt out of the cartoons. In the new movie, Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is stranded on Earth after Skeletor's forces destroy Eternos. Fifteen years later, Adam returns to embrace the mantle of He-Man, and liberate Eternia from Skeletor's tyrannical rule, but he's not exactly the hero of legend that everyone expects.
Despite heading up stop-motion studio Laika, and working in animation for much of his career, Knight didn't keep up with He-Man's mostly animated output over the years. "[He-Man] was a huge part of my childhood, but there were so many different iterations since then, and that was not something that I vibed on [at the time]," Knight admits. "But getting acquainted with some of that stuff now with fresh eyes as an adult, it was interesting to see what remained and what changed. For me it was always about: hold on to what made it pure and interesting to begin with, which was where it started."
Masters of the Universe might not be picking up directly from any previous adaptations, but Knight previously revealed how the new movie is acknowledging the original animated series by imagining "What would happen if [Skeletor] actually won?" In the same interview, Knight also claimed that fan-favorite character She-Ra will "play a huge part" in any sequel. Thankfully, those sequel prospects are looking promising – early verdicts have billed Masters of the Universe " as one of the biggest surprises of 2026."
Masters of the Universe releases in theaters on June 5. For more, check out our list of upcoming movies, or plan out your year with our 2026 movie release dates guide.
