// SPACE.COM — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Move over He-Man, Mattel's Major Matt Mason space toys could still be blasting off for Hollywood
Is Mattel's 'Man in Space' getting a deserved live-action film in the near future?
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As evidenced by Paramount's live-action "Transformers" movies and the recent "Masters of the Universe" film released by Amazon MGM Studios, nostalgic toy lines can serve as fertile grounds for a variety of engaging Hollywood projects leaning into vintage intellectual properties.
With Mattel ramping up their own film production efforts and toy-to-screen endeavors after enormous success with "The Barbie Movie" and hi-octane plans for Hot Wheels movies rolling into theaters, the toys-to-silver screen craze shows no sign of slowing down. What could be next? We think there's a perfect choice hiding in the Mattel goldmine that might just become the next big thing.
We're of course talking about Major Matt Mason, that Plastisol astronaut action figure and kids' playset product line from the 1960s, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
Born in the 1960s, during the heat of America's space race with NASA's Apollo program aiming for the lunar landing by the end of the decade, Mattel's design mastermind's found inspiration in visionary space concept artists' wild dreams of futuristic moon bases, lunar buggies, and space vehicles.
Major Matt Mason was one of the first serious space toys to exist in the marketplace, first hitting the shelves of toy shops and department stores across the country in 1966.
Capitalizing on the daily news stories of Gemini missions and Apollo moon-walking dreams, this spacefaring fellow and his astronaut pals let kids everywhere imagine colorful cosmic adventures.
Back in 2019, Variety reported that Tom Hanks was attached to star in a Major Matt Mason live-action film being set up at Paramount Pictures with Akiva Goldsman ("A Beautiful Mind," "The Da Vinci Code") hired to write the screenplay.
Hanks is an enthusiastic advocate of NASA history after starring in Apollo 13 and co-executive producing the Emmy Award-winning HBO docuseries "From The Earth To The Moon" alongside "Band of Brothers" super producer Graham Yost. Despite the heavy hitters attached, momentum has since stalled on the sci-fi project and it's sadly been shelved for the immediate future.