Remember way back in time, say, two years ago, when a new Power Rangers movie was released to reboot the franchise? Well, it didn’t do so well and now Hollywood is about to say “It’s Morphin Time” yet again.
io9 has confirmed that Paramount is in “early negotiations” with filmmaker Jonathan Entwistle (Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World) to reboot Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on the big screen. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news.
Unlike the aforementioned 2017 film, though, these Power Rangers would be less “Young Adult” and more “1990s sitcom,” like the original U.S. show. In fact, the current pitch “is said to 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,” according to the trade. Writer Patrick Burleigh (Peter Rabbit 2) is reportedly working on a script.
All this, of course, confirms previous reports (like the one above) that Hasbro, the new owners of the Power Rangers franchise, was looking to get back in the movie business. Even former rebooted Red Ranger himself Dacre Montgomery said it was a possibility.
My colleague James Whitbrook has a lot of thoughts on this (which you can and should read here) but my initial reaction is that it...makes sense? First of all, the 2017 movie was only half bad. Once the characters actually became Power Rangers, it picked up big time, proving the core idea of kids becoming a team of superheroes still works. Plus, with Hasbro now onboard, you expect the company to age it down a bit to actually make toys from it. That’s what Power Rangers was originally about anyway. And yet, this is just the 500 millionth example of Hollywood’s lack of originality and blind faith in franchises that have already shown themselves to not be guaranteed hits.
But, while pessimism may be a prevailing reaction, the optimistic side would be to think about how awesome a fun, time-traveling Power Rangers movie that harkens back to the original TV show could be. It seems like a long shot, but an exciting one nonetheless.
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