Amazon’s flop Masters of the Universe is in some pretty sizable company. The He-Man reboot — which earned an undercooked $54 million globally (including just $29 million in North America) against a reported budget of $170 million — is the latest ’80s nostalgia play to fall on hard times with audiences following fellow misses like The Fall Guy, The Running Man, Tron: Ares and even The Naked Gun.
“There are so many examples of these Gen X IP plays not playing beyond the Gen X audience — and that’s an audience that maybe doesn’t even go to the theater anymore,” Christopher Rosen says of the Masters of the Universe opening.
That bore out in the numbers, Sean McNulty notes: Only 6 percent of the opening-night audience were teenagers; just 19 percent were under 25. That’s half of the under-25 audience that Paramount’s horror-comedy hit Scary Movie pulled during its opening night.
“Our friend group, Chris, in the 45-54 range was the largest,” Sean says of the Masters audience. “So those people did come out. But again, relying on that demo for your backbone is questionable. That is just not the core moviegoing demographic.”
As Chris suggests, anecdotally at least, the Gen X cohort isn’t really even going to theaters anymore — despite being active ticket buyers in the 1990s and 2000s. “Just speaking from personal experience, moviegoing is not a large part of my friend group’s diet anymore as they’ve gotten older,” Chris says, pointing perhaps to the Covid disruptions as the break point for Gen X audiences.
“I do think that was the fallacy of Top Gun: Maverick,” Chris adds, noting the $720 million North American gross was maybe a red herring to what audiences actually want. “It was clearly geared to Gen X dudes. But the movie really did expand beyond that group. And that success may have created false hope for some. So, it’s a bummer for Masters of the Universe.”
But Amazon’s loss was Paramount’s gain: Mining millennial IP in the form of the Scary Movie franchise, the studio exceeded expectations with $55 million in North America and more than $100 million worldwide.
“Between this and The Devil Wears Prada 2, we’re two-for-two on millennial nostalgia,” says Sean.
