Lionsgate and Paramount had high hopes for 2017’s Power Rangers. With their eyes on the success of Transformers, the film was intended to be the springboard to a new cinematic universe, with Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer saying that the studio had worked out a six-movie plot arc. But things didn’t go quite as they’d planned.
The reboot landed with a thud at the box office, grossing just $85 million against a $100 million budget (although, the film eventually squeaked into small profitably after its international release). Now, it seems that Hasbro’s eager for another bite at the apple and this time they’re working with Paramount.
Today saw the Hasbro Financial Call, led by CEO Brian Goldner. It was a tough 2018 for the company, thanks largely to Toys R Us going bust. But he was eager to assure shareholders that bright things lie in the future, and one of them’s this new Power Rangers project.
But what form could the new movie take? Well, one option’s to continue the story of the 2017 outing, albeit with some modifications to tone and direction. Power Rangers actually wasn’t terrible, and in my opinion, they assembled a pretty good cast of Rangers. Plus, if they maintained the same actors, they wouldn’t have to go through yet another origin story in which a group of teenagers get to grips with their newfound powers and cool robots.
Working against that, though, is that the new movie has an expected release date of 2021, meaning that the fresh-faced teenage cast will have grown up a bit, and their contracts may have expired in the meantime. As such, my bet is that we’ll get yet another reboot of the story. Fortunately for Hasbro though, the Power Rangers have been rebooted into new teams so many times in the TV show that it shouldn’t be that big a deal. All I hope is that we start in media res and leave the origin story confined to a brief flashback.
