Franchise addict Idris Elba heading to He-Man for his next hit

Is there a Hollywood actor more hooked on franchise acting gigs than Idris Elba? The MCU, the DCEU, Fast And The Furious, Alien, Sonic The Hedgehog, Star Trek, Zootopia… We’re shocked, in hindsight, that the man never got a toehold in the Dark Universe. (He was presumably  busy trying to launch his own, The Dark Tower, during that very brief window.) If a script calls for a budget above $100 million, and an intimidating guy with a cool deep voice, rest assured that Elba will pop up in there somewhere, looking badass for five minutes, and then presumably looking even more badass when he goes to the bank to cash his check.

Now, Deadline reports that Elba is in serious talks to sign on for Masters Of The Universe, the long-brewing attempt to get a He-Man movie in theaters for the first time since 1987. The film, which is being developed at Amazon MGM, currently stars Alison Brie, Camila Mendes, and Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man himself, and will now likely add Elba as Man-At-Arms—a character who, to our enduring irritation as kids, did not have some weird gimmick where his arms popped off or swapped around, and was mostly just kind of good at hitting people with stuff. (Also firmly in He-Man’s skillset. Just saying.)

Elba comes to the project off of what has, for him, been an extremely restrained 2024—which is to say he’s only really been in one thing, the Knuckles TV show. (Sonic 3 is out this Christmas, though.) That being said, he’s got a typically vast slate of projects currently in either pre- or post-production, because Idris Elba never sleeps when there’s some CGI to stand in proximity to.

Efforts to get a new He-Man movie up and running have stretched across the last 20 years, and have chewed up a huge number of directors, writers, and potential He-Men over the decades. This latest incarnation started solidifying back in February, when it was announced that Travis Knight—founder of stop-motion studio Laika, who’s been breaking into live-action journeyman work in recent years with his well-received Transformers movie Bumblebee—would be helming the movie. And now they’ve (probably) got Elba, which is how you know it’s a real franchise, and everything.