Jared Leto to star with Nicholas Galitzine in ‘Masters of the Universe’

The next big bad in Jared Leto’s motley crew of sinister screen villains has finally been announced.

The House of Guicci star will officially play Skeletor in Amazon MGM’s upcoming Masters of the Universe live-action film. Leto will play arch nemesis to the film’s hero, He-Man, portrayed by Bottoms breakout Nicholas Galitzine.

But that’s not all for Masters news: today’s Leto casting announcement fittingly comes with the announcemet of three additional members of the ensemble. Trap Jaw (Sam C. Wilson), Tri-Klops (Kojo Attah), and Goat Man (Hafthor Bjornsson) fill out the cast as henchmen of Skeletor’s peccant posse.

Masters of the Universe is notable as a big screen superhero story that isn’t derived from Marvel or DC intellectual property. That’s because, technically, it’s a toy story. The IP hails from Mattel, which originally launched a line of action figures in 1982 that were accompanied by comics, which then spun into 1983’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe animated series, and resulted in dozens of toys, comics, series, and films in the years since.

Mattel hit it big with Barbie in 2023, and have since endeavored to create a cinematic universe of their own, telling The New Yorker shortly after Barbie‘s release that the company had 45 films in development. Beyond Masters, Mattel has announced a live-action American Girl dolls film, a live-action Polly Pocket film (with Lena Dunham originally in and now out of the director’s chair), and a Barney movie starring Daniel Kaluuya.

Masters of the Universe has been gestating for years. To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before‘s Noah Centineo was originally cast as He-Man before being replaced by West Side Story‘s Kyle Allen, and then Galitzine. The current cast is rounded out by Alison Brie, who will play another Skeletor lackey, Evil-Lyn, Idris Elba, who will play the noble Man-at-Arms, and Riverdale‘s Camila Mendes as Teela, Man-at-Arms’s daughter and He-Man’s right-hand woman.

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Bumblebee director Travis Knight will helm Masters of the Universe, which hasn’t had a live-action film adaptation since 1987. That film starred Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor, and is notable for helping launching the career of future Friends star Courteney Cox.

Skeletor is a legendary comic book villain, but nothing Leto hasn’t tackled before. The actor-musician’s filmography has lately been ceded almost entirely to villain parts, including the Joker in The Suicide Squad, the titular vampire in Morbius, and a forthcoming antagonist role in Tron: Ares.