“It’s Morphin’ Time!” Vancouver will be the filming location for the upcoming Power Rangers movie, a reboot of the 1990s pop culture phenomenon.
Filming for the unnamed Power Rangers movie is scheduled to begin in British Columbia on January 18 and end on April 12, according to YVR Shoots. Development for the big-budget film was first announced in May 2014 as a joint project between Saban Entertainment, the original creator of the series, and Lions Gate Entertainment.
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The movie will be directed by Dean Israelite, who is best known for his work with the 2015 film Project Almanac. A script has already been prepared by Ashley Miller and Zack Stenz, who have previously penned for other major productions such as Andromeda, The Twilight Zone, X-Men: First Class, Thor, Star Trek 3 and Fringe.
“I read the script and was really surprised by it and thought there was a really cool, contemporary, mature but still playful, buoyant and fun take on the material, and was updated in a really interesting way,” Israelite told IGN in June 2015. “It had this wonderful character that’s essential to going on a fantastic adventure. I was instantly drawn to it.”
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The Power Rangers were based on the Japanese Super Sentai series and immediately gained popularity after it aired for the first time in 1993 on the now-defunct Fox Kids network. The Walt Disney Company purchased the franchise in 2001 as part of a wider deal to acquire a number of 20th Century Fox’s assets. In 2010, Saban reacquired the series from Disney for $43 million as part of its plans to reboot the series.
The reboot film is scheduled for a theatrical release on January 13, 2017. This will be the third film in the series following 1995’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie and 1997’s Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie.
The premise of the series revolves around teenagers who are recruited to combat powerful alien super villains. When confronted with a crisis, the individuals would ‘morph’ into superheroes that wear brightly coloured skin-tight spandex suits and helmets that provide them with superhuman abilities and weapons, including skyscraper-sized robotic vehicles.
Another 1990s children’s entertainment program that will be making a planned comeback is Reboot. Earlier this year, Vancouver-based animation studio Rainmaker Entertainment was green lit by Corus Entertainment to produce 26 new half-hour computer animated episodes.
B.C.’s film industry has been on the rebound since 2013 due to the provincial government’s renewal of competitive tax rebates, the impact of the low Canadian loonie, and the presence of a wealth of acting talent and highly trained production crews.
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