While there has been more attention recently on Joseph Kahn and Adi Shankar’s Bootleg Universe version of the characters, the official, Haim Saban-sponsored new Power Rangers film is now well underway. Project Almanac’s Dean Israelite is directing, and the first cast member has now arrived. Martian actress Naomi Scott will play the Pink Power Ranger.
By which we mean she's in Ridley Scott's The Martian, obviously - not that she's an actress from Mars. She plays Ryoko in that movie, and was previously Maddy Shannon in Terra Nova.
Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz have written the new Power Rangers screenplay, with Star Trek / Transformers writer Roberto Orci present to help guide the story’s structure.
What that story will be is still unclear, but it'll likely function as a fresh variant of the usual Rangers trope: a group of ordinary – at least by the standards of the show – teenagers, who when danger strikes, “morph” into colour-coded superheroes with specific powers, whereupon, they battle a variety of beasts and other villains. The pink one was a gymnast, if we recall.
Launched in 1993, the show battered the ratings and remains one of the top-rated and longest running live-action TV series in history, morphing into different versions with new casts and a variation of the title each time.
Power Rangers currently has a UK release date of January 13, 2017.