‘Masters of the Universe’ Is Crashing and Burning at the Box Office as Amazon’s He-Man Gamble Faces an Uncomfortable Truth
For decades, He-Man held the power of Grayskull with an iron fist, commanding Saturday morning screens and bedroom toy shelves alike. When Amazon MGM Studios committed to bringing the ‘Masters of the Universe‘ franchise back to the big screen with an all-star cast and a reported production budget of between $170 million and $200 million, it felt like the kind of swing that could genuinely revive a beloved property for a new generation.
The film, directed by Travis Knight, stars Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Adam and Jared Leto as the villainous Skeletor, with the story following Adam as he returns to his home planet of Eternia to stop Skeletor and claim his destiny. The cast also includes Camila Mendes, Idris Elba, and Alison Brie, forming one of the more eye-catching ensembles assembled for a fantasy blockbuster in recent memory. Critics were cautiously warm, and audience scores online painted a picture of a film that fans actually enjoyed.
The box office, however, has been telling a very different story. ‘Masters of the Universe’ cratered in its second weekend, earning just $8.668 million from 3,677 theaters, representing a massive 71% drop from its already disappointing $29.4 million opening weekend. Through ten days, the film has made $46.73 million domestically and $86.13 million worldwide, a trajectory far removed from what a production of this scale would require to be considered a success.
To understand just how brutal that drop is, context matters. Luiz Fernando compared the film’s second-weekend performance to other notable box office disappointments, including ‘The Fall Guy’, ‘Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves’, ‘The Lost City’, and ‘Free Guy’, all of which managed to hold significantly better in their sophomore frames. The film has now fallen to number five at the domestic box office, with Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day claiming the top spot this weekend. With a reported break-even point sitting around $425 million, the film remains more than $325 million short of that target after just two weekends in theaters.
Making matters more complicated is the gauntlet of competition still ahead. ‘Toy Story 5’ and ‘Supergirl’ arrive before the end of June, while July brings ‘Minions and Monsters,’ the live-action ‘Moana’ remake, Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’, and ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ all of which should make audience retention even more difficult going forward. The domestic run is now projected to land at approximately $60 million, a figure that would be a bruising result for any studio betting on a franchise launch.
Amazon MGM, to its credit, is not playing the same game as a traditional Hollywood studio. Amazon doesn’t need movies like this to profit purely in theaters. It simply needs them to recoup their marketing budget and boost the profile of their eventual Prime Video rollout, a dynamic rooted in the company’s broader ambitions to build out its streaming library. Amazon’s domestic distribution chief Kevin Wilson defended the situation publicly, calling it “exactly the kind of critical first moment that validates our holistic distribution strategy.”
The film does hold a 68% critics score and an 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, suggesting that those who did show up largely enjoyed what they saw. Whether that goodwill translates into a streaming success story on Prime Video, or whether mixed word of mouth doomed any real franchise momentum before it could build, is the question that will define He-Man’s future.
Do you think ‘Masters of the Universe’ still has what it takes to become a streaming hit on Prime Video, or has the theatrical crash already done too much damage to the brand’s credibility?
