Paramount Pictures is developing a new Power Rangers reboot film! Jonathan Entwistle, known as a director and executive producer on Netflix’s popular The End of the F***ing World, is in early negotiations to direct.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the news, the new film’s story line aims to bring the franchise to its roots, and will involve a time-travel element that brings the kids to the 1990s, and in Back to the Future fashion, they have to find a way to get back to their present. Patrick Burleigh, who wrote the upcoming Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, is penning the script. Hasbro, which acquired Haim Saban’s flagship Saban’s Power Rangers property and other entertainment brands in 2018, is producing the feature via its film arm, Allspark Pictures. This will be the first Power Rangers film produced by Hasbro. Paramount and Hasbro, Inc. struck a deal in 2017 to produce and distribute content based on Hasbro brands, as well as original stories.
Studio Lionsgate produced and released a feature from Dean Israelite in 2017 that rebooted the title, making it less kid-friendly and giving it a more brooding YA edge. The movie grossed $142.3 million worldwide - $85.36m of which came domestically - on a reported $105 million budget, much less than was anticipated, causing Lionsgate to scrap plans for a series of Power Rangers movies as a result. It isn't known what the advertising budget was for the film. Power Rangers did end up doing fairly strong business in both home video and merchandise sales, however. That film, starring Naomi Scott, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Banks, RJ Cycler, Becky G, Ludi Lin, and Dacre Montgomery, earned mixed reviews from critics. Israelite recently directed and executive produced Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark? revival miniseries. The stars of the 2017 movie hinted at the reboot during a Reddit AMA earlier this year.
"I think there is a movie in the works but it's not with me and the cast," Stranger Things star Montgomery - Jason the Red Ranger in the movie - said when asked if another Power Rangers flick was on the way. "So yes, but not with us."
When the news broke, that film's Black Ranger Ludi Lin is thrilled about the news. "Amazing news! Another chance to embrace a DIVERSE TEAM of HEROES! I’m a fan!," Lin wrote on Twitter.
On the surface, Entwistle is an outside-the-box choice for the shiny franchise as his Netflix show is dark and envelope-pushing, about the opposite of what you can get for a Hasbro property. The show, a dark comedy that he directed and exec produced and that debuted its second season in November, told of the growing friendship between a teenage boy who believes he is a sociopath and is looking for a person to kill and a girl who persuades him to ditch their homes for a road trip.
Entwistle is currently in post-production on I’m Not Okay With This, another Netflix show he co-created, exec produced and directed. Also teenage-centric, Not Okay focuses on a girl dealing with high school life, her budding sexuality and superpowers.
But the director, repped by CAA and Grandview, has shown he has a grasp on the voice of the younger generation, which execs hope will translate into something unique and appealing onscreen.
This iteration of the Power Rangers franchise will be just another notch on the belt of movies produced with Hasbro and Paramount. The two companies have recently relaunched the Transformers franchise with Bumblebee and are currently working on Snake Eyes and Micronauts.
Despite being under Hasbro for just a short time, Brian Golden — chief executive for the toymaker — explained earlier this year he was pleased with the toyline's performance in the marketplace.
"Sure. Well, the launch of POWER RANGERS is starting in North America," Goldner said. "The line launch there. We had some products ship in Q1, but limited. It will roll out in the subsequent quarters, both in North America and around the world. I'm very pleased with the ratings of the new show. It's a ratings leader in its time slot. It's offering a very strong lead out. And Nickelodeon's been a very good partner and helping us to market the new series. The team has done a great job in producing this transition from Saban to our own studio has been seamless, and I give the team a lot of credit for producing such a high quality show that's really beloved by kids and improved in a number of ways from the last production. So we're, obviously, very excited about POWER RANGERS, not only for this year, 9 months, but for 2020 as we'll have a full year impact. So very good there."
The Power Rangers franchise kicked off in 1993 as a television series based on the Japanese Super Sentai franchise. Though there have been a number of iterations since its debut, the Power Rangers has rarely strayed from the original premise: a group of teenage friends who could transform into monster-fighting superheroes. The franchise has also gave fans three feature films: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in 1995, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie in 1997, and Power Rangers in 2017. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is among TV’s longest-running kids’ live-action series with almost 900 episodes to date in several incarnations. The show first aired on Fox Kids, then in the 2000s on Disney-owned channels. A movie also hit theaters in 1995. The long-running Power Rangers TV franchise aired its 26th season — Beast Morphers — this year on Nickelodeon, with season 27 (a second season of Beast Morphers) set to premiere on the network in 2020.
Keep in mind that the plot for this new Power Rangers movie could change down the line. It’s still early into the creative process, and since Paramount hasn’t set a release date yet, there’s plenty of time for Patrick Burleigh to change the narrative or Jonathan Entwistle to add his own tweaks. Still, with time travel having been a well that the Power Rangers have utilized numerous times, this would be a unique way for this next movie to stand out from its predecessor.
The cast of the 2017 film has since gone on to do other projects, both in TV and movies. RJ Cyler has been involved in several projects, including Scream and Black Lightning, while Dacre Montgomery has hit it big in Stranger Things.
Naomi Scott played Jasmine as part of Disney's Aladdin and was also featured in Charlie's Angels, while Lin played Murk in DC's billion-dollar Aquaman and is poised to be featured in the upcoming Mortal Kombat film.
As for Becky G, she's been lighting up the music scene with a slew of hit singles and her recent album Mala Santa and shows no signs of slowing down.
Power Rangers starred Dacre Montgomery (Jason/Red Ranger), Becky G (Trini/Yellow), RJ Cyler (Billy/Blue), Ludi Lin (Zack/Black Ranger), and Naomi Scott (Kimberly/Pink Ranger), as well as Bryan Cranston (Zordon), Elizabeth Banks (Rita Repulsa) and Bill Hader (Alpha 5).
Are you excited for the Power Rangers reboot? Let me know in the comments!
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Original source: EW.com; Additional sources: ComicBook (II), Deadline, TheWrap, Complex, CINEMABLEND, We Got This Covered, io9.
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