Released on March 24, 2017, Power Rangers was directed by Dean Israelite from a screenplay by John Gatins and carried a reported production budget of $100 million. The cast included heavy hitters such as Bryan Cranston voicing Zordon and Elizabeth Banks playing Rita Repulsa. Confident on Power Rangers was high, as Israelite confirmed ahead of release that the studio already had a six-movie arc mapped out. The critical reception, however, didn’t support those plans. Power Rangers landed at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 179 reviews, with a Metacritic score of 44 out of 100. At the box office, the film opened to $40.3 million—a serviceable number—but collapsed 64.8% in its second weekend. As a result, its worldwide total of $142.3 million against a $100 million production budget, once marketing costs were factored in, resulted in an estimated $74 million loss for the studio.
Was 2017’s Power Rangers That Bad?
Image courtesy of Lionsgate
2017 Power Rangers‘ most contested creative decision was its deliberate move away from everything that made the source material popular. Israelite told outlets ahead of release that his goal was a “character-driven” story with a “grounded nature,” which in practice meant the Rangers didn’t morph into their suits until the film’s final act and spent the majority of the runtime dealing with personal trauma, social isolation, and high school angst. The budget also visibly constrained the spectacle. The Zords appeared only in the climax, and only the Red Ranger received a dedicated CG weapon due to cost limitations. For a franchise built on colorful action and escalating monster battles, a film where the heroes remain in civilian clothes for the first ninety minutes was always going to test the patience of fans who showed up expecting the franchise’s core appeal.
The film does, however, hold up better than its box office implies, and the character work that frustrated some viewers was also its most durable achievement. RJ Cyler’s Billy Cranston offers a genuinely compelling screen presence, and the team’s dynamics carry an emotional weight that the franchise’s television installments rarely attempted. The diversity of the cast, which Israelite described as central to the film from its earliest stages, was also ahead of where blockbusters were landing in 2017. That said, the PG-13 rating was a commercial miscalculation that pushed away the young children who were the franchise’s traditional audience, while the teen drama framework didn’t attract the older viewers who made MCU films into events. As a result, the 2017 Power Rangers fell into a gap of its own making, neither fully embracing what Power Rangers was nor committing hard enough to something genuinely new.
Is There a Future for the Power Rangers Franchise?
Image courtesy of Lionsgate
The $74 million loss of the 2017 Power Rangers killed the six-movie plan instantly, but it didn’t end the industry’s appetite for another attempt. Hasbro acquired the franchise in 2018 and began developing a new film and television reboot, this time with director Jonathan Entwistle attached and a Netflix series meant to run alongside it. After years of development hell, that arrangement fell apart in June 2024 when Hasbro and Netflix ended their partnership, leaving both projects without a home. By the end of 2024, Hasbro had publicly announced it was stepping back from financing film and television projects based on its own IPs entirely, putting the Power Rangers reboot permanently on hold.
In March 2025, Hasbro announced a new partnership with 20th Television, with Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz—the producing team behind Percy Jackson and the Olympians—attached to write, produce, and showrun a new live-action series for Disney+. Principal photography was reportedly scheduled to begin in January 2026 in London, and there have been rumors of casting taking place. However, we haven’t gotten any official news on that front. Simultaneously, Paramount and Hasbro were reported to be co-developing a separate theatrical reboot. That’s two concurrent high-profile reboots in development, a remarkable position for a franchise that has yet to produce a profitable film in three theatrical attempts. Whether the Disney+ series or the Paramount film ends this period of failed attempts remains to be seen.
Do you think a return to the franchise’s roots is the right move, or does Power Rangers need to reinvent itself entirely to survive? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
