The Role: Skeletor Cast Instead: Well, no-one. Back in the middle of the last decade (between 2004 and 2007 to be precise) John Woo was reportedly trying to get a new He-Man movie made, ignoring the fact that the character was about as irrelevant as could possibly be, and there wasn't a great deal of call for blonde-bobbed muscle men in furry knickers at the multiplex anymore, even if the original Dolph Lundgren movie has become a cult classic by then. It was never officially green-lit, but Woo was said to be very interested, and wanted Sex And The City star Jason Lewis to play his blonde bombshell, as well, apparently as Nic Cage, who he'd worked with on Face/Off for Skeletor, if rumours are to be believed (and when they're this ridiculous, it's pretty hard to resist.) Rumour has it that Cage couldn't commit (to what is unclear, since there appears to have been nothing to commit to, aside from a tentative script from Adam Rifkin) because he was already playing a skeleton-type character for Ghost Rider.
Why He Would Have Ruined It...
The Masters Of The Universe is an awful film, to the extent that it has now transcended traditional barometers of awfulness and come clean out the other side into the glorious land of perverse pleasure. And the very idea of Cage trying to play a camp, kitsch villain without so much as a hint of irony (it was a Woo production remember) is bone-chillingly perverse. It might have been an epic failure, and one worthy of watching, but it would never have been actually good. Plus, Cage now has form with playing skeletal characters, after the spectacular failures of the Ghost Rider, so let's all just be quietly glad Woo never got this one off the ground.
