(Tim Palen/Lionsgate)
Now that you’ve seen the Power Rangers reboot, you might be wondering if producer Haim Saban and Lionsgate have plans to keep the franchise going. The answer is yes. Not only does Saban want to make a Power Rangers 2, he wants to make five move movies!
First off, as After Credits notes, there is a brief teaser after the credits that hints at Tommy Oliver, the Green Power Ranger, making an appearance in the reboot series. Just before screenings of the film started on March 23, the official Power Rangers Twitter account sent out a “motion poster,” showing the Green Ranger helmet.
Long before Power Rangers hit theaters, Lionsgate was talking about their bold plan for the franchise. Back in May 2016, Variety reported that Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer told analysts that there could be “five or six or seven movies.”
Saban, who co-created the original franchise with Shuki Levy, told Variety on March 22 that they “already have a six-movie story arc.”
He also made it clear that movies are the future of the long-running franchise because the audience wants great special effects. “Today’s young audience is much more sophisticated,” Saban told Variety. “Think about movies like Jungle Book and Arrival. The effects are mind-boggling. So does the young audience expect more? You bet they do — and they will have it.”
Saban and Levy launched Power Rangers in 1993, and the franchise used stock footage from the Japanese show Super Sentai. Saban Entertainment continued to produce new series of the franchise until 2002’s Wild Storm. That same year, the franchise transferred over to Disney. Saban bought the franchise back in 2010 because he wasn’t satisfied with the direction Disney took it. The series is now in its 24th season, Ninja Steel.
“I monitored from a distance what they were doing,” Saban told Variety. “I think Disney never really got its arms around the value of the franchise.”
Surprisingly, the 2017 Power Rangers film is only the third theatrically released movie in the franchise. In 1995, Saban released Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, which was followed tow years later by Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie.
The new movie was directed by Dean Isrealite (Project Almanc) and written by John Gatins (Kong: Skull Island). Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, Becky G, RJ Cyler and Ludi Lin play the Power Rangers, while Bryan Cranston plays Zordon. Elizabeth Banks plays the villain Rita Repulsa.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Montgomery hinted that the relationship between his character Jason and Scott’s Kimberly would be explored further in “potential” sequels.
“In the final cut, there is definitely less of a focus on the romance between them than what we did in production,” Montgomery told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s more about a five-person story, an ensemble piece, rather than our love story. But there is definitely a lot of room for exploration in potential future films of that element between [them].”