While his attachment to rebooting the Morphin' Grid has long since passed, Jonathan Entwistle has finally broken his silence and revealed a bevy of information regarding his plans for Netflix's now-cancelled Power Rangers reboot, including the fact that Tommy Oliver would have served as both its central villain and main mythological figure.
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As previously reported, Netflix first announced their plans to fully reboot the American Super Sentai adaptation in 2019, at the time tapping Entwistle, perhaps best known for helming the UK television adaptation of Charles Forsman's comic series The End of the F -- ing World and the streaming giant's own teenage super powered drama I'm Not Okay With This, to develop this new project.
However, after five years and only a single update - during the company's Q4 2022 earnings call, Hasbro Chief Financial Officer Deb Thomas assured investors that it was undergoing "continued development" - TVLine's Matt Webb Mitovich broke the news in June 2024 that Entwistle's reboot was "no longer moving forward at Netflix."
Surprisingly, despite the nature of the internet and how long it was in development, not a single piece of concrete information regarding Netflix's Power Rangers reboot ever made its way to the public.
That was until May 21st, when holding an Ask Me Anything session with Reddit's /r/movies community in promotion of his upcoming Karate Kid: Legends, Entwistle was met with and subsequently answered a number of questions regarding his Power Rangers work.
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Asked by one Reddit user if said project would "have been a new take on Mighty Morphin' or something new?", the former reboot shepherd detailed, "From as early as 2018 I had created an entire new universe for Power Rangers - kind of a multiverse (it was v fashionable back then haha). I wasn't doing MMPR specifically, but Tommy Oliver [as originally portrayed by the late Jason David Frank] was the center of the world, all the mythology was surrounding him being one of the most important people in the universe... because we all know what he would become."
"So it was basically a time-bending HUGE story about stopping Drakkon from taking power over everything," Entwistle continued. "The TV series had a kind of really cool King Arthur-vibe, that was the angle, more mystical, magical to start us off. Jenny Klein who was writing that show [her previous credits include Netflix's Jessica Jones and The CW's Supernatural] also came up with a very very cool idea for sentient colors... but alas, it never went anywhere. Which sucks, I would've LOVED to have made that universe a reality!"
Pressed by another as to "How far along was your Power Rangers stuff before Hasbro pulled the plug?", the Karate Kid: Legends director recalled, "I was writing a movie version. Then Hasbro bought eOne [a film and television platform that has since been sold to Lionsgate] and it was all shaken up again, the movie was shelved and then a TV series became the new focus, I started work on that, mapping out how that could work with multiple movies, shows and animations - we worked closely with Netflix on all of that."
"And then eOne was no more and the whole concept of the show and movies just got lost in that shuffle," he added. "It really sucks because it was such a cool approach, Star Wars level, but I think Hasbro just couldn't get everyone behind the same approach."
Finally, Entwistle was asked outright, "What happened to your Power Rangers reboot project", which he ultimately admitted, "With all the changing owners of the Power Rangers IP over the years it just got lost in the mix. I think no one could agree on whether it should be a movie or a TV show."