By the Power of Streaming

He-Man has the power! Well, on streaming at least. After (rather predictably) bombing at the box office, Amazon smartly, quickly, pivoted Masters of the Universe to Prime Video and by the power of Grayskull... As Rick Porter (Ri-Porter?) reports:

The movie based on the 1980s cartoon series and toys scored the No. 1 overall ranking in Nielsen’s streaming ratings for July 20-26, its first week of streaming. It debuted July 22 on Prime Video, less than weeks after its theatrical premiere; it has made a little under $114 million worldwide at the box office against a $170 million budget. Masters of the Universe scored 1.17 billion minutes of watch time for the week and was one of just two titles to cross the billion-minute threshold.

Let's not get too carried away, it barely beat The Big Bang Theory, content which is – checks notes – nearly two decades old. Still, that's a show with 281 episodes versus a single movie (I'm still not sure why they bother comparing such things, which is insanely unfair to movies, but I guess time glued to screen is time glued).

Anyway, if the movie can hold well on streaming, it will be interesting if Amazon moves forward with the sequel, which – quasi-spoiler¹ – they obviously aimed to do given the tease at the end. There had been some talk that they would despite the box office disappointment, and I think that's perhaps a promising sign that Amazon understands that box office is increasingly just one element of how this can work. To be clear, they would have loved a big box office here, but they've also run this playbook before, salvaging big budget "bombs" on streaming.

The key is to move relatively quickly, as Amazon did, going to Prime Video just six weeks after the opening – notably, skipping any SVOD window.

This is smart. You can take advantage of/recoup some of the theatrical marketing, which is a trick Netflix has stubbornly refused to learn with their anti-theater stance – but that's obviously changing too. Yes, even post-Warner Bros deal blowing up.

It helps that Masters of the Universe was decent. Not great, but not awful. Not as good as Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – seriously! – was, but in a similar tongue-firmly-in-cheek vein. The fact that it looked a little too Thor-y,² but with worse CGI didn't help. But it seemed to find some footing as it went on.

So yeah, definitely watchable in a nostalgic sort of way. Which, I was the, um, prime audience for. As I've written about – probably far too much – I grew up obsessed with the He-Man toys and cartoon. Did I know that it was created by Mattel as a way to combat Star Wars (after they passed on those toys)? No. Would I have cared? No – have you seen the Castle Greyskull toy?³ It's still awesome.⁴

I also loved the first Masters of the Universe movie even though it was scary as shit – especially if you're, I don't know, five years old, as I was when it came out. Frank Langella, FTW.

Anyway, the fact that I wasn't there on opening night for this new one probably wasn't a great sign for its box office prospects. Worse, I didn't see it in theaters at all! A big part of the problem is that I now have young kids of my own. It's hard to find time to break away to go see a movie (well, one that's not in their wheelhouse at least). Sure, you do it for The Odyssey and Spider-Man (especially since my wife was interested in the former and my older child interested in the latter!), but Masters of the Universe? Sorry, He-Man. And I suspect I wasn't alone in my demographic – again, perhaps the key demographic here...

But did I watch this new Masters of the Universe immediately when it came to streaming? You bet your Skeletor I did!⁵

So what might Amazon do here for a sequel, strategy-wise? It's early, but I think the right idea would probably be a wide, but limited theatrical run. Make it a two-or-three-week-only engagement – ideally with IMAX – to try to drive super-fans to theaters. Then go even faster to streaming. And ideally augment all of this with some killer toy sales! You're Amazon for Teela's sake!

¹ And I don't mean Orko, who obviously also needs to be a focal point of any sequel! ↩

² Not helped by the role that Idris Elba plays in both. He's good in Masters, but come on... ↩

³ As the popcorn buckets can attest! ↩

⁴ I couldn't have been the only kid who was confused that the castle shaped like a skull wasn't the home of the villain with the skull face... ↩

⁵ The movie also probably wasn't helped by some level of Jared Leto backlash, though the most recent allegations came out well after the movie was already bombing. Also, he was pretty widely considered to be the best part/performance of the movie (not that you can tell it's him). Though shout out to Alison Brie as Evil Lyn! ↩