Power Rangers Reboot Delayed to January 2017
When the Power Rangers film reboot was originally announced last May, I was overjoyed with the franchise's potential. Lionsgate has done extremely well with their films over the years, especially in regards to The Hunger Games. A few months after the film's announcement, Lionsgate revealed X-Men: First Class screenplay writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz were handling the script. Come fall, executive producer Roberto Orci, who had been attached as an executive producer after departing from the then-active Amazing Spider-Man franchise, left the project due to scheduling conflicts with his directorial debut on Star Trek 3. Then just last month, Lionsgate delayed the film from a coveted July 2015 release date to a less-than-savory January 13, 2017 date.
Needless to say, the reboot has faced a few hurdles since its inception. The move from a primetime summer release to a mid-winter release typically isn't a show of confidence for film studios, with May through August typically represented by the year's biggest films and October through December reserved for prestigious films making a run for Oscars consideration. However, the studio is still confident that the Power Rangers film will be successful, choosing a date where they can capitalize on an otherwise slow weekend. As it stands right now, only two other films are slated for the date: Boss Baby, a comedy starring Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey, and The Magnificent Seven, a Western reuniting director Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer) and Denzel Washington. The Power Rangers film would certainly be able to capture a wider audience than the two films, which is a positive for the project.
Of course, the project found some unintentional competition when the amazing POWER/RANGERS fan film was released this past March., leading SCG Power Rangers, LLC (the company that owns the Power Rangers IP) to take action against the film. The fan film's release could have posed a major problem to the official project, given the incredibly warm reception producer Adi Shankar received for the dark and gritty reimagining. With a director in place (Project Almanac's Dean Israelite) and full support by Lionsgate, the reboot should find success despite (or perhaps due to) the January release date. For all we know, this could be the perfect opportunity for both the studio and the franchise to establish itself in a less-crowded release window. Who knows? Maybe the Power Rangers reboot could jumpstart mid-winter as a prime time for larger studio releases.
[via /Film]