Director Dean Israelite’s 2017 reboot of Power Rangers wasn’t exactly the huge hit that everybody was hoping for, earning just over $140 million at the box office and receiving lukewarm reviews, despite Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer claiming in the run-up to the movie’s release that the studio was hoping to make “five, or six, or seven” installments.
Power Rangers did manage to do solid business on both home video and merchandise sales, but the final nail in the franchise’s coffin was seemingly shut when parent company Saban sold the rights to the brand as part of a half-billion dollar deal with Hasbro in May of 2018. However, given the fact that Hasbro has already made countless billions from the Transformers franchise, it seemed unlikely that the company would let another brand that already has a built-in nostalgia factor and huge merchandising potential lay dormant for too long.
In a recent interview, Hasbro Global Brand Development and Marketing Manager Beth Bamrick offered new details on the potential future of Power Rangers, essentially admitting the franchise is set to be rebooted yet again while also confirming that Hasbro plans to take their time in developing the project.
“So I can’t comment as much as everyone would love me to on the movie per-se, but what I will say is we’re really looking at every opportunity. We are planning two and three years out, so we do have a lot in the pipeline, but we have a lot to get to first like we talked about. We just kind of took it on, so we will definitely have more to come.
It’s top of mind with us as well as we kind of think about where we want to bring the brand next but again, I think it’s… we do have some plans that are out there which we’ll be excited to share with you when we can, but yeah we’re definitely looking at it like a 2 to 3 year approach in everything that we’re doing.”
Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery, who played the Red Ranger in the recent reboot, recently admitted that any new Power Rangers movie probably wouldn’t star any of the cast members from the previous incarnation, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Not only is Montgomery now part of the Netflix phenomenon, but co-star Naomi Scott’s profile has rocketed following the billion-dollar success of Aladdin and the actress will next be seen as one of the leads in the upcoming Charlie’s Angels reboot, which just happens to be directed by Elizabeth Banks, who played Rita Repulsa in the 2017 version of Power Rangers.
There’s also little chance of Bryan Cranston returning to play Zordon, with Alpha 5 voice star Bill Hader now leading the critically-acclaimed HBO series Barry. In other words, it seems almost inevitable that the Power Rangers will be rebooted yet again in the not-too-distant future, and will once again be played by an entirely different cast, with the project being shepherded by both a new studio and a new creative team. And frankly, that might be for the best.
Published: Aug 4, 2019 07:18 am