Fracking heck, Captain Planet And The Planeteers are back. Telly's most dedicated band of environmental-aware heroes are getting the big-screen treatment, with Sony working on a movie version of the early '90s TV show. It's been in the works for three years now and finally seems to be taking to the skies.
The show's premise, originally commissioned by Ted Turner as a kind of Last Airbender-meets-**An Inconvenient Truth ** for tweens, has Earth spirit Gaia bestowing magical rings on five teenagers. Each ring represents a different life force: African Kwame gets earth; Wheeler, from North America, has fire; Linka, a Russian, controls wind; Asian Gi has water; and South American Ma-Ti gets heart.
They'll be using these powers against a range of pun-heavy villains like Dr. Blight, Verminous Skumm, Duke Nukem, Looten Plunder and Rapen Pillage - OK, not the last one - and occasionally calling upon titular superhero Captain Planet when the chips are down, or Shell's lawyers get involved. And here's who should play the blue dude{
Our American readers will remember an array of Hollywood stars lending their voices to the show, mainly as the villains. Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Sheen, Meg Ryan, Malcolm McDowell, Neil Patrick Harris, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum and Elizabeth Taylor all did stints in the audio booth. Pixar's own John Ratzenberger even popped up in an episode entitled - and this is 100 per cent true, pinky promise - 'The Ghost of Porkaloin Past'.
Saving Private Ryan and **2012 **producer Mark Gordon is overseeing the project with Don Murphy and Susan Montford. As you can tell from those credits, Gordon is a Hollywood big hitter and it's a busy time for him. He's one of the prime movers behind the recently announced Narnia sequel, Chronicles Of Narnia: The Silver Chair.