Looking at the Hollywood graveyard littered with the remains of would-be franchises and cinematic universes that imploded after a single movie, you’d have thought the industry would have learned its lesson a long time ago.
Proving once and for all that executives at any company will steadfastly refuse to learn from their mistakes, an entire shared Power Rangers mythology is currently in development from Netflix and Hasbro, with the latter purchasing the rights from Saban after Dean Israelite’s grounded and gritty reboot fell flat on its face.
In the buildup, the ambitious strategy came across as brash and overconfident even by the standards of the business, with Haim Saban coming out and revealing there was a six-film arc in place that would rapidly expand the Power Rangers saga once the origin story was out of the way.
In the end, the painfully mediocre stab at reinventing a property with camp classic and cult favorite potential as a self-serious superhero blockbuster was the wrong move, and Power Rangers posted a theatrical loss after earning just $142 million on a $105 million budget, immediately torpedoing the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth installments.
Toy sales are rumored to have ultimately put it in the black, but the numbers still weren’t high enough. While we wait for Netflix to mount the next relaunch, 2017’s Power Rangers has been enjoying a resurgence on streaming, with FlixPatrol revealing the turgid slog has re-entered the Prime Video most-watched list after a surprisingly strong weekend on demand.
