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By your powers combined…  Scratch that.  By the power of DiCaprio!  Recent Oscar winner Leonardo Dicaprio is officially producing a live action movie based on 90s cartoon series ‘Captain Planet and the Planeteers’.  The project languished at Sony for years until the rights lapsed.  Paramount is in negotiations now to acquire to make the film, with Dicaprio’s Appian Way Productions.

Photo credit: Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com
Photo credit: Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com

Dicaprio is a well-known environmentalist, so this project could be a good fit for him.  What’s a little odd is that it sounds as this will be a comedy, something Dicaprio is not known for.  Dicaprio will produce along with Jennifer Davisson Killoran of Appian Way and Glen Powell.

Paramount is eyeing Powell and Jono Matt to write the script.  Oddly, neither has much experience in screenwriting but apparently, the studio liked their pitch which would focus on an old, washed up Captain Planet who is “now a washed-up has-been who needs the kids more than they need him.”

Powell may be best known as an actor, having been a series regular on the first season of ‘Scream Queens’ as douchy Chad Radwell.  Though not much more than this is known, there is some question as to whether Powell may also star as the title hero.

Photo credit: Jaguar PS / Shutterstock.com
Photo credit: Jaguar PS / Shutterstock.com<,/span>

‘Captain Planet and the Planeteers’ was a well-meaning cartoon that aired on TBS in first-run episodes from 1990-92.  The show was a mixture of superhero action and environmental preachiness education.  The show focused on five teenagers given magic rings by the goddess Gaia which gave the control over the four basic elements Earth/African Kwame, Fire/American Wheeler, Wind/Russian Linka, Water/Japanese Gi and Heart/Brazilian Ma-Ti. When things got heated, the teens could combine their powers to summon the more powerful Captain Planet, who seemed to have blue crystallized skin and a rockin’ green mullet.

Interestingly, Gaia was voiced by Whoopi Goldberg and Kwame by LeVar Burton.  At the time, they were also co-starring on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’.

Speaking of voice actors, the show’s environmental themes attracted some pretty big name Hollywood talent to guest star, usually as the campy villains.  Included were: Dan Ackroyd (who didn’t even provide the voice for his own character in ‘The Real Ghostbusters’!), Ed Begley Jr., Tim Curry, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum, Louis Gossett Jr., Helen Hunt, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen and Sting among others.

Will the new movie similarly attract some big names?  Well, it sounds like the movie won’t arrive for years, as Paramount still doesn’t officially have the rights and the script isn’t written yet.

Would you like to see a new, live-action Captain Planet?

Source: The Hollywood Reporter