For the second time in the last year or so, Warner Brothers recently killed off their planned new live-action He-Man movie, which was preferably called Greyskull for a while, and then back to Masters of the Universe. Both moves came as a surprise as, even though it is He-Man, a review of the Justin Marks script by Latino Review claimed that it had a ton of potential and a real Lord of the Rings vibe to it. The reasoning behind Warner Bros. ultimately dispatching the classic property? It looks as if the studio and the creative sides of the project just could not see eye to eye, and decided it would be best to drop it and move on.

Now comes word that Columbia Pictures didn’t wait too long to go right after the property, and at last notice, they are in negotiations to acquire it. If this deal does move through without a hitch, though, there’s a good chance it could come with a price those of you looking forward to the project won’t swallow easily.

In November, rumors arose that instead of killing the new He-Man movie, that they were talking to Kung Fu Panda co-director John Stevenson to helm the movie (Read: ‘Kung Fu Panda’ Director To Helm ‘He-Man’ Movie?). Today, this rumor became reality, as it was confirmed that Mr. Stevenson will indeed make his live-action debut with what’s been called Greyskull but is now apparently being called Masters of the Universe (I vote for the former).

John Stevenson only has the experience directing Kung Fu Panda, so along with this being his first live-action go, he’ll also only be handling his second feature. Fortunately, the man has a ton of experience in the art/animation departments of many well-known movies such as Shrek 1&2, Labyrinth, and The Dark Crystal.

Not too long after it was reported that the new live-action He-Man movie titled Grayskull had been been terminated, there comes some promising news. It appears that Kung Fu Panda co-director John Stevenson has been hired to captain the re-envisioning of the classic 80’s toy/cartoon.

It’s said that Stevenson went into the production studio’s offices, made himself a pitch, and wowed the people that matter, like Joel Silver. This netted him the job of directing what I’m assuming is still Grayskull, which was very highly spoken of and hailed as a Lord of the Rings-esque He-Man story.

Hopefully this is true. I wasn’t thrilled when I heard that they weren’t doing this anymore, so I’d very much love to know it was happening again. It’s tough to tell whether this is the right man for the job, but he’s done a bunch of art department workings on movies like Shrek 1&2, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth along with the previously mentioned co-direction of Kung Fu Panda, which many people including myself liked a lot.

Every so often a project has the masses greatly excited and then BOOM, its progress is shut down and the project is killed. This is apparently what has happened to the new He-Man project that was being developed at Warner Bros. called Grayskull: Masters of the Universe.

All this comes as a shock because not too long ago, Latino Review — who also broke this bad news — was able to read the script by Justin Marks and absolute raved about it. From the description of the opening sequences, I and many others were also incredibly excited about how it was sounding. It looks like WB just was never really big on the project to begin with and probably had nightmares of Dolph Lundgren and Courteney Cox haunting them non-stop.

Aside from nightmares, the two huge guillotines were this: WB had a list of directors they wanted, including Bryan Singer and Doug Liman, both of whom passed it up. Also, the main man who brought Grayskull to Warner, Navid McIIhargey, actually left for New Regency, which is a good way to get a project snuffed out.

If you go back a little ways, there was an incredibly positive script review of Grayskull: Masters of the Universe, the new take on the ultra-nostalgic world of He-Man. If you didn’t read about the script review, I suggest you check it out (see A Glimpse Of “˜Grayskull: Masters Of The Universe’).

MTV talked to the film’s screenwriter Justin Marks, who had some things to add; things that might just give you a wet willy if the script review didn’t do it for you.

Marks calls the movie a re-invention, explaining it as similar to (as Latino Review’s El Mayimbe compared it to in his script review) a “Batman Begins-ification” where a character/franchise is completely done over in a much more realistic, much less cheesy way. We saw this in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and this is what is planned for the upcoming remakes for Robocop, Red Sonja, and Conan.