How He-Man Helped to Ruin Superman IV

https://www.cbr.com/he-man-masters-universe-movie-ruined-superman-iv/

Golan and Globus wanted to be at the top of the film industry, so they tried to make some major splashes and that involved signing big licenses. The issue was that Golan and Globus were not really all that familiar with American popular culture. They really only knew Superman and Superman was already locked up by the father and son producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind.

The Salkinds, though, were having some financial issues of their own, after the disappointing box office results of Superman III and the downright failures of Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie, so they agreed to license out the production of the next Superman film to Golan and Globus (a deal worked out when all four were attending the Cannes Film Festival in 1985). Basically, they would pay the Salkinds $5 million for simply the rights to produce a Superman movie. Everything else, Golan and Globus would have to do on their own.

The problem was that their new, higher budget movies, were ALL BOMBING. Their $25 million science fiction epic, Lifeforce, made less than half its budget back. They gave Sylvester Stallone alone $12 million dollars to get him, at the height of his fame, to do a movie for them and the resulting film, Over The Top, lost almost half of its $25 million budget, as well.

In the middle of all of this, Golan and Globus kept signing other big deals, now doing pretty much the exact opposite of their old approach, which was now that they needed a blockbuster to cover all of their other losses, so they cut licensing deals with Spider-Man and with the Masters of the Universe (Producer Edward R. Pressman had previously cut a deal with Mattel, so they had to work out a deal with him, as well). Like I said before, they weren't even aware of who these characters were, so they were just asking "Who are the biggest properties out there?" and signing them and in the mid-1980s, Masters of the Universe was HUGE.

Golan and Globus were able to raise a bunch of money by selling future distribution rights (VHS and cable) to their films, with Superman IV being the big jewel in their crown, so the company was able to raise enough money where it could spend $36 million on Superman IV. The problem was that its initial $17 million budget for the Masters of the Universe film was quickly proving to be not enough and so it seemed as though director Gary Goddard was not going to be able to actually FINISH the movie.

So Golan and Globus simply took the budget for Superman IV and cut it in half and spread that money around to its other films, so that Masters of the Universe was able to finish filming, but now Superman IV had less of a budget than even the Masters of the Universe movie!