10 Movies That Started As Something Else Entirely
4. Cyborg Was Almost Made Into A He-Man Sequel
Cannon Films were originally very confident that their much-hyped Masters of The Universe summer 1987 release would be another Superman, a film franchise based on a pop culture favourite that could churn out a box office smash every few years.
In fact, they were so sure of it catching on with 80s audiences that a post-credits scene was shot promising that the villainous Skeletor would return to seek his vengeance on He-Man for foiling his plan for domination.
Alas, it didn't quite all go to plan.
Debuting only third in the box office charts on its opening weekend and finishing up its run with a majorly disappointing $17.3 million (and after being HATED by critics), Masters Of The Universe 2 was on life support.
It quickly became evident that because of the underwhelming returns on the first movie, Cannon wouldn't have the financial clout to make the sequel it had originally been so confident of making and plans for He-Man and Skeletor's return were officially scrapped for good when they were forced to cancel their licensing deals with Marvel and Mattel due to a lack of capital.
However, $2 million had already been spent on sorting out the costumes and sets for a Masters Of The Universe sequel they were no longer going to make and rather than seeing them go to waste, a studio executive got the idea to use them for a much cheaper, alternative film that could exist as something else entirely.
It took one weekend for Albert Pyun to write the script for the action sci-fi movie Cyborg and only took 23 days to shoot Jean-Claude Van Damme fighting marauders in a post-apocalyptic future.
The result was a very poor version of Mad Max but Cannon films managed to accrue the money they'd spent on the sets back, which was pretty much all they cared about when going ahead with Cyborg anyway.