We often find ourselves fascinated by movies that refuse to exist merely on their own merits, but which instead live as the vessels of ambition for other, as-yet-hypothetical films. There\u2019s a very particular kind of movie that refuses to merely be a good story, told well, but which must serve as an even clunkier artifact: A franchise launcher. And when these cinematic Helens fail to launch even a single other ship? So much the stranger.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s in that light that we find ourselves fixating today on a new interview from\u00a0Stranger Things\u00a0and\u00a0Faces Of Death<\/a>\u00a0star Dacre Montgomery, who was, once upon a time,\u00a0Power Rangers<\/a>\u00a0star Dacre Montgomery. Montgomery confirmed to\u00a0MovieWeb\u00a0this week<\/a> what we all knew, deep in our hearts: The 2017 film, which also starred Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Banks, and Bill Hader in roles their agents somehow failed to protect them from, was never meant to be a standalone film, or even the start of a mere trilogy. No,\u00a0Power Rangers\u00a0(2017) was intended as the launching point for a whole tetralogy. (We would also accept \u201csaga\u201d or \u201ccycle\u201d in this situation.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Montgomery\u2014who shared Ranger duties in the film with RJ Cyler, Naomi Scott, Becky G, and Ludi Lin\u2014said that the films were pitched as \u201ca four-picture deal with Lionsgate,\u201d noting that the studio was fresh off a massive four-installment success with its then-recent Hunter Games\u00a0movies. But then, of course,\u00a0Power Rangers\u00a0barely made back its $100-million-plus budget, and so, Montgomery says, \u201cWhat can you do, right? We\u2019re talking about money and big business, and it didn\u2019t make enough on the investment that the studio had made to continue making more.\u201d (He does note that he\u2019s heard some kind of other reboot of the franchise is currently in the works; Disney+ is reportedly working on a new TV series being headed up by the guys behind\u00a0Percy Jackson And The Olympians.)<\/p>\n Speaking of Disney, these incredibly ambitious\u00a0Power Rangers\u00a0plans put us in mind of comments that actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani made last year<\/a> about his own dalliances with the world of blockbusters, when he revealed that he\u2019d been on the hook for six movies and a theme park ride set in the world of\u00a0Marvel\u2019s Eternals. Truly, we live in the darkest universe\u2014although not the Dark Universe, which also totally failed to take off after its first installment flopped<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We often find ourselves fascinated by movies that refuse to exist merely on their own merits, but which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-385972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}