It’s Morphin Time… again! Hasbro purchased the entire ‘Power Rangers’ brand in 2017, and are working to reposition the colorful monster-stompers as a formidable force in pop culture again, and part of that initiative is to bring them back to the big screen. A deal has been struck with Paramount Pictures to create a new ‘Power Rangers’ movie with Jonathan Entwistle in negotiations to direct.
Entwistle created the Netflix series ‘The End of the F***ing World’, the second season of which recently arrived on the streaming service. His second Netflix series, ‘I Am Not Okay With This’, starring ‘It’s Sophia Lillis and Wyatt Oleff is in post-production. He has never directed a film, so ‘Power Rangers’ may be his first.
Patrick Burleigh (‘Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway’) is reportedly writing the script which is said to involve time travel. Reportedly, the teens will be transported back in time to the ’90s and will have to find a way home. Hasbro is producing via its Allspark Pictures.
‘Power Rangers’ first took America by storm in 1993, under the name ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’. Initially a TV series, ‘Power Rangers’ mixed footage of American actors with tokusatsu action sequences lifted from the Japanese series ‘Super Sentai’. The toys and TV show were a massive phenomenon. At this point, there have been 20 different iterations of ‘Power Rangers’ over the years. The current version is ‘Power Rangers: Beast Morphers’.
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There have been three ‘Power Rangers’ theatrical movies, none of which have been successful. The first, ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’ was released in 1995, and made only $66 million worldwide on a budget of $15M. That was followed by ‘Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie’ in 1997, which only made $9M worldwide. They were both released by 20th Century Fox and featured the same actors that starred in the TV series at those times.
1997’s ‘Power Rangers’ was produced by Lionsgate, and also flopped, making just $142M on a budget of $105M. This version was a reboot of ‘Mighty Morphin…’ with new actors playing the characters from the original– Billy, Jason, Kimberly, Trini, and Zack.
It was following that last failure that Saban Entertainment sold the brand to Hasbro, for a reported $522M.
We’ll have to see how Hasbro approaches this film. Will it be another reboot or a brand new incarnation? Will it connect to the TV shows or not?
Are you looking forward to another big-screen adventure by the ‘Power Rangers’?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
