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Director Jon M. Chu's G.I. Joe: Retaliation may have had its release suddenly pushed last spring by almost a year (it's now scheduled for March, 2013), but that didn't stop him from signing on to a new big-screen version of He-Man called Masters of the Universe. And now Chu is talking about what it takes to make a movie that's based on a cartoon that was created to promote a toy line.
In an interview with Celebuzz, the director admits he was skeptical about the project at first… until he read the script.
"I was blown away," he says. "I had no idea what to expect but it was such a fresh, UNEXPECTED approach I was immediately intrigued. I never expected to connect on a human level to a MOTU movie but I really plugged in emotionally. That alone, got me excited to see what we could do with the property."
He says it was never a conscious decision to do another "toy" movie after G.I. Joe, but rather he sees Masters of the Universe as a "challenging puzzle to make into a movie that works to a contemporary audience." Chu thinks "tonal tightroping" is the key to getting it right.
"We’re just going to play for the next several months," he says. "Play with designs, play with the characters, try new things, maybe go too far on some things and pull back. The process is really important to find where the right line is so we can land right on it. I think that’s what can dig out the [property's] full potential for a cinematic rebirth. … I don’t really think about the '80s movie when looking at this movie because the script here is so strong and so unique. I think the characters are so grounded and layered [that] I never expected that in a Masters movie so to me it’s on a totally different level. Don’t get me wrong, I love the '80s movie for full nostalgic reasons but this script feels like it’s a totally different genre than that one."
