The Head Producer on Netflix’s new Castlevania series, Adi Shankar, is working on an R-rated reboot of Power Rangers series from the ‘90s.
During an interview with Polygon, Shankar said his next big project was a Power Rangers meets Dragon Ball Z type series that would reimagine the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series that ran between 1993 and 1999, aka the first 3 seasons or 145 episodes of the hit TV show. The show would be an animated series just like the upcoming Castlevania series and Shankar said it would be the most violent version of the show to date.
“It’s a complete retelling of the first three seasons,” Shankar said. “And it’s going to be really fucking dark. Darker than any other Power Rangers series.”
Shankar is already working on the script for the first season and wants to launch the series within the next 18 months, but has yet to sell the series to a network. When asked if there were any potential suitors, Shankar said there were a couple of networks interested but he wanted to bring the show to Netflix.
“Netflix is doing what every other network should be doing.” Shankar said.
Shankar said what he wanted to get away from with the revamp was the monster-of-the-week format the original Power Rangers series had to follow. Instead, he wanted to make it a linear series and focus on the essential story elements.
“If you look at what shows are like today, they’re long movies.” Shankar said.
Shankar wants the Power Rangers series to have climactic battle sequences and feel large in scale, something he got an influence from with the hit anime Dragon Ball Z.
Right now, this is just a concept that Shankar is working on, but he’s hoping to sell the series pretty soon.
This is not the first time that Shankar has done something Power Rangers related. Back in 2015, Shankar teamed with music video Producer Joseph Kahn to create the very popular short film Power/Rangers, a part of Shankar’s Bootleg Universe which features gritty reboots of The Punisher, Judge Dredd & James Bond.
Shankar’s biggest obstacle is Saban Brands, who holds the rights license to all Power Rangers properties, and they were not a fan of the Power/Rangers short film; though Netflix does hold the streaming rights for the brand at the moment so there is a chance that with Netflix at the table, this project might have a chance depending on how the Castlevania animated series goes.
So far Netflix nor Saban Brands has made a comment about the interview or Shankar’s pilot/idea.
