Tag: Saban Brands

Power Rangers News Galore: The Big 2-0, DVDs to kill for, and the Greatest Megazord Toy EVER! XD *UPDATED*

Hey, look whose actually posting news for a change? But enough with me ragging on myself, we’ve got more important matters to attend to. We have confirmation for Season 20, newly released DVD sets, (one of which will blow your mind), and some new official pics for Super Robot Chogokin Daizyujin (okay, that’s really Sentai news, but it’s still cool anyway). IT’S MORPHIN’ TIME!

First, and newest, we’ve got official, confirmed info about the 20th Anniversary Season of Power Rangers. According to a new report, the next season of Power Rangers will be entitled “Power Rangers MEGAFORCE”, and while no details about the next season were revealed, some tantalizing clues would seem to suggest a number of future event meant to act on the “cross-generational appeal” of the show:

Next year will mark the landmark 20th Anniversary of the Power Rangers brand, an occasion for which Saban Brands is already deep in preparation. Plans for the anniversary include a new series, “Power Rangers MEGAFORCE.”

Saban Brands plans to embrace the series’ cross-generational appeal during the anniversary by celebrating its past as well as its present and future.

Older fans will be able to participate in special events and online activities, while new products and the new show will attract younger fans.

“We’re in an exciting place as a brand. We look at the 20th anniversary not just as a celebration of the past, but as our entry into a third decade,” Dekel says.

With new series launching every two years that reinvent the brand and change its theme, Power Rangers looks to remain a force in children’s entertainment. “Just like our audience, we’re constantly reinventing ourselves,” Dekel adds. “We can honestly say that after 20 years, this isn’t a fluke – kids really do identify with and engage with this show.”

The article also talks about how Saban Brands was able to revive the Power Rangers Brand, the Brand’s new Worldwide Reach, the growth of the Paul Frank Brand (also owned by Saban), and just Saban Brand’s amazing new-found success.

Moving on to DVD news, in addition to Lionsgate Entertainment releasing episodes of Power Rangers old and new DVD, TimeLife.com is currently taking pre-orders for the soon-to-be-released Power Rangers DVD Box Set, entitled Power Rangers: From Mighty Morphin to Lost Galaxy Complete First Seven Seasons. This set includes 40 discs, with 338 episodes from the first seven season, tons of bonus material including 2 DVDs featuring rarely seen archival material; exclusive new featurettes; and interviews with the cast, creators, and fans of Power Rangers. And with each of these sets you’ll get this cool (and somewhat familiar) Mighty Morphin Red Ranger figure wearing the Dragon Shield w/ Power Sword and blaster (a rare Bandai-made figure according to the site description). And all of this can be your’s for $219.95! (Expected to ship August 6th)

Yeah, talk about sweetening the deal…

UPDATE: Official Box Art for the DVD Collection has just been released! Check it out below:

And finally, while not being completely related with Power Rangers, there is this:

Yep, it’s an official image of the Super Robot Chogokin Daizyujin, and it looks amazing. Check out these other pics below:

Known to Power Rangers fans fondly as the Megazord from MMPR, this figure stands at 140mm tall, comes with signature sword and shield, and a couple of effects parts. Note that it cannot transform into the “tank mode”, as the main priority with the Super Robot Chogokin toy line is articulation (and a very thorough level of detail). It costs 5040 yen and is expected to come out in September. While normally I avoid covering stuff like this (due to my own inability to afford stuff like this), it was worth mentioning. I mean just look at it…. not even out yet and it’s probably one of the best figure versions of Daizyujin I’ve seen yet.

UPDATE: This figure will be available from retailers in the US and Canada on October, for the price of $60.99, just in time for the start of the Power Rangers 20th Anniversary celebrations. This according to Tamashii Nations USA Facebook page.

Well, that’s it for pertinent Power Rangers news. Just a friendly reminder to those of you asking about the latest round of auditions, they’re not accepting any new applicants, better luck getting those in next time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to a web server about a DVD pre-order. 😛

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

New Power Rangers Season 20 Casting Breakdowns COMFIRMED!: I’m back! And I brought you a present. :)

Hey, how’s it going everybody? Sorry I’ve been gone so long, but sometimes life gets in the way of things you really like to do. Anyway, we now have new official casting info that I hope will make up for it!

That’s right, we’ve got new breakdowns from Actor’s Access (note: you’ll need an account with them to view it, which is totally free), and it seems to be almost exactly the same as the last set. Check it out below:

Tuesday, May. 1, 2012, 6:21 PM PacificPOWER RANGERS (AA) Non-Union Episodic Casting Director: Iris Hampton Interview Dates: April 24th – June 1st.  Callback Dates: TBD  Shoot/Start Date: Shoot-October/Required to relocate in early SEPT. Pay Rate: There is pay. Pay to be determined.  Location: New Zealand
SUBMIT HARDCOPY
SUBMIT ELECTRONICALLY
PLEASE SUBMIT BY TUESDAY, MAY 1ST.		 POWER RANGERS 1950 SAWTELLE SUITE 360 LOS ANGELES, CA  90025
IF POSSIBLE, PLEASE SUBMIT ACTOR’S ONLINE DEMO CLIPS ALONG WITH EACH ACTOR SUBMISSION.
ALL TALENT must be willing to relocate to New Zealand for approx. 6-8 months. Must have valid or current passport with at least one (1) year left before renewal or able to get one. Please note the names noted in the character breakdown are temporary names for the Rangers needed for this season. PLEASE NO PHONE CALLS AT THIS TIME. Casting phone is not up and running until Tuesday, April 24th.
ALL OF THE FOLLOWING POWER RANGER ROLES are a group of five teens 18-23 years to play 15-19 years. They are all nice looking, charismatic, energetic, outgoing and confident. They must have SUPER HERO LOOKS with average height and in great physical condition. Martial arts or gymnastics is a plus, but not mandatory. We are hoping for a very young looking cast this season.
[RED RANGER – REESE] Any ethnicity male, 18 – 23 to play 17-19 years. Reese is an attractive young man with super hero looks and a nice athletic build. He is a natural leader with honorable intentions. He is a much disciplined young man.[BLACK RANGER – BARON] All ethnicity Male, 18 to 23 to play 17-19. He has good looks with a slim build. He is fearless, fun and athletic. He wears his heart on his sleeve.[BLUE RANGER – PARRY] Any ethnicity Male, 18 to early twenties to play 16-19 years. He is a bit on the nerdy side. He is a studious and highly intelligent.

[PINK RANGER – SADIE] Any ethnicity, 18 to 23 to play 16 to 19 years. Average height. Sadie is a beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent and confident. She is very intuitive and genuinely cares about others.

[YELLOW RANGER – AVA] Any ethnicity, 18 to early twenties to play 16 to 18 years of age. Average height. Ava is STUNNING and athletic. She is generally unflappable and tough, but has a heart of gold. A young Angelina Jolie type.

Yep, everything you’ll need for said auditions. And for my fellow toku fans, I can now hereby confirm that the 20th season of Power Rangers will be based off of Tensou Sentai Goseiger and not any later Super Sentai series like many had predicted. And because they haven’t formally announced the series yet, the show still doesn’t have an official title, though the name “Power Rangers Megaforce” was trademarked last year by Saban Brands last year, so that may still possibly be the title. Anyway, here’s a little sneak preview of what the next team of Rangers will look like:

A fitting bunch to represent the 20th Anniversary celebration of the Power Rangers franchise, don’t you think?

Anyway, some possible spoilers: This group will use card-based attacks, which will include special cards for morphing and summoning their zords. And a new twist on the zords: instead of constantly summoning new zords to create some massive thrown-together eyesore, the will summon attachable zord heads which will unlock new combinations and special moves. In the original Goseiger, they went up against three different enemy organizations, with one enemy constantly reappeaing, but they might not include all three if they don’t run it for two seasons. And yes, there is a sixth ranger, but it won’t be another teenager, or human for that matter!

Aright, enough spoilers for today. Just get out there and start sending in you resumes! That goes for all of you that have been asking about this new updated info since last June.

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

UPDATE: As of Friday, May 25th, they have stopped accepting new auditions for this next season of Power Rangers, and are now moving onto the next stage of the process, whittling down the number of applicants. Currently, they have about 50 people per role, so it will probably be awhile before we hear anything about an official cast. And yes, there has been unofficial confirmation from people auditioning that one of the roles is for a Black Ranger, confirming a Goseiger adaption. Yes, I know that some of the casting sides were straight out of Go-Kaiger episodes, but that doesn’t mean diddly squat at the moment.

Long Overdue UPDATE: To anyone still interested, I posted this story months ago, and the audition process for this future season of Power Rangers (a.k.a. Power Rangers Megaforce) has been over. The new cast has been picked and revealed already, so please, DO NOT POST ANY MORE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW! This is NOT a casting agency website, this is just an informational fan blog. I have no influence over the casting process whatsoever, I’m just a fan like the rest of you. So unless you want to get spammed like crazy, please stop leaving you personal information. And just to be clear, I have no idea when they will be auditioning for future Ranger series, so don’t ask about that either.

In case you missed it: Power Ranger Super Samurai (PRS Season 2) Premiere!

Hey, in case some of you out there missed the premiere of the new season of Power Rangers Samurai (a.k.a. Super Samurai), you can check out this official video from Nick.com:

My official review: MMPR The Movie Part II: The Revenge of Ivan Ooze. Seriously, this episode was just like the movie, only with the Samurai Rangers, and no one running off to an alien world to get Ninja Powers.

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

Jungle Fury tops Internet Toy searches: The King of the Jungle is reclaiming his crown! Too bad he’s got nothing to show for it.

So, did any of you catch the Power Rangers Jungle Fury marathon on Nicktoons over the weekend. I know I certainly did (in fact, it took up most of my Saturday). Well, probably one of the most interesting things to come out of the marathon had nothing to do with the show, but with a major boom in toy searches.

Over the weekend, toy searches for Power Rangers Jungle Fury skyrocketed, and top search on Saturday (11/19) was for the Bandai.com Power Rangers Jungle Fury website (which is still up, btw). This was according to newstaar.com, who, while also mentioning the current series Power Rangers Samurai, was apparently unaware of the fact that toys and general merchandise for Jungle Fury were no longer in production (you can still find stuff online, but nothing available in stores). But this is still a major victory for Saban Brands an their partnership with Nick. Why? Because within the three days that marathon ran for, they made one of the lowest rated Ranger series produced under Disney into an actual overnight sensation (it actually happened overnight, can you believe it?). I wouldn’t be surprised to find out later that they were going to do something like this again, only this time coinciding with the release of a new toy line like the Power Rangers Super Legends. I smell big money on the horizon. 😛

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

New Proposal to Saban Brands on Adapting Go-Kaiger: Why do all the work?

Dang, that’s a lot of Sentai Senshi. And it’s also one of the biggest hurdles (figuratively AND literally) to adapting Go-Kaiger into a Power Rangers series. So much of the footage features all of these other Sentais that either existed before Power Rangers was finally able to get off the ground or were just never adapted, and so much of the storyline is wrapped up in getting the Grand Powers from all 34 of them that trying to reduce that number to fit the current number of Ranger seasons would be a monolithic task that would end up diverging almost too much from the source material. So that once again begs the question that many have been asking for months; how will Saban end up handling Go-Kaiger? What will they have to do in order to adapt Go-Kaiger into a new Power Rangers series?

At present, there are really only two possible solutions to this conundrum: 1) Either try to do what they can to adapt most of the series they can by trying to incorporate the older Sentai series into the Power Rangers franchise, or 2) Try to redo most of the show from scratch, keeping only the footage they could get away with using while working around the clock to create hours and hours of brand new material that focuses just on the series that have already been or will be adapted. And either way will end up becoming a massive production, as so hinted in the recent memo that was sent by Power Rangers Casting Director Iris Hampton to casting agencies. So what should Saban do?

While I can’t predict what Saban will end up doing, I can offer a suggestion for how they could go the first route, how they could adapt the whole of Super Sentai in one sweep, and the best part about my proposal is that Saban would have a lot less work.

My proposal is: Fan Video Contest!

Yes, a fan video contest, but not just any fan video contest. No, the main goal of this video contest will be to have fans shoot, direct, and create their own “Rangerized” version of the yet-to-be-covered Sentai series past and present. This is how I imagine a contest like this working: Saban would put up stock footage from these previously unrecognized series on a special contest website, where potential contestants could download and try to create a short 10-15 minute “pilot” for whichever series they want, coming up with a name, setting, and plot line for the series based on the footage, just like the way Saban comes up with ideas for a new Power Rangers series. Then the contestants would either upload the video onto the contest website or send it to the SabansPowerRangers YouTube page (for ease of access purposes). And from those submissions, Saban would choose the best videos, one for each series. The winners of this hypothetical contest would get a chance to sit in the director’s chair and help create, and possibly star in, a mini web series (around 10 or so episodes) for the series.

The perks of Saban Brands holding a contest like this: 1) It would give fans a chance to be part of the creative process, 2) That would be less time Saban had to spend coming up with a storyline for each of these new series, 3) Fans already make videos like this and post them to YouTube all the time, so Saban really wouldn’t have to wait too long for submissions to come in, and 4) By using these pilots to make new mini web series for these past Sentai series, it would act as a point of reference for adapting the whole of Go-Kaiger when trying to explain where all of these previously unseen and unheardof Ranger Teams came from. The only real drawbacks from holding a contest like this would be either dealing with a lack of decent submissions, or having to further spread the fact that Power Rangers IS an adapted series (which is common knowledge to anyone that spends five minutes researching the series online, but then again, some people in the US still don’t know that “The Office” is an adaptation of a BBC Comedy, so there you go).

Now no one can predict what Saban will ultimately do (trust me, I’ve tried many, many times with utter failure), but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t do something like this. But imaginary contests aside, if they are planning on adapting Go-Kaiger as the next Power Rangers series, then they do have quite the Herculean task ahead of them, and I wish them the best of luck.

My only suggestion to them: don’t be afraid to ask your fans for a little help. 😉

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

Power Ranger Super Samurai in 2012: See, I told you they would use it next season!

Can I call it, or can I call it?

It looks like they’ve been saving this for season two. Starting next year, Power Rangers Samurai will resume under the new title of “Power Rangers Super Samurai”. It was comfirmed in an interview with Saban Brand’s Kirk Bloomington in the October 2011 Issue of The Licsensing Book Online (page 17).

Most likely, this is an indication that they’ve been saving the Super Shinkenger footage for season two, or should I say Super Samurai, and that they’ve been trying to avoid using the vests and the new Megazords/Megazord formations for then. If that is the case, then I’m definitely looking forward to the new Power Rangers Super Samurai!

Wasshoi! (Wait, wrong show.)

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

Saban Brands Registers “Ultra MegaForce”: What’s this suppose to be?

Ok, so it’s been about a week since “Power Rangers MegaForce” was registered as a trademark by Saban Brands via Power Rangers LLC. And now we’ve learned that they’ve recently trademarked the title “Ultra Megaforce”, leaving many to wonder what it could be.

The trade mark was registered on the 6th, the same day we found out about Power Rangers MegaForce, and the type of registration is for live action television. So what exaclty does that mean? Are we looking at a new, unrelated series? Is this related to Power Rangers MegaForce? Is MegaForce even the name of the next Power Rangers series (a.k.a. the Goseiger adaption)?

A lot of speculation, but no real answers as of yet. We’ll try to keep you informed of any updates.

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

 

Power Rangers Megaforce the next series title? Yep!

Recently, Saban Brands through Power Rangers LLC trademarked the title “Power Rangers Megaforce”, which, as you can imagine, has led a lot of people to speculate on whether or not this is in fact the title of the next Power Rangers series, a.k.a. the Goseiger adaption. Here’s a copy of the trademark:

I know it’s not very big, but you can still see that it doesn’t really mention anything in the copyright application about a live-action television series, but it does mention a truck load of merchandise, mostly video, computer and possibly app games, electronics cases, DVDs featuring live-action entertainment for kids, music, and eyewear/eyewear accesories. It sounds like the typical merchandise setup for a new series, only with no series confirmation, or any children’s toys for that matter.

So then, even with nothing confirming a new live-action series, do you think that this is unofficial confirmation for a new series, possibly the Goseiger adaption? Or do you believe that this is something else? Personally, I’m not sure what to think. The name itself is so unspecific that it could be applied to anything. For all we know, this could be something similar to the “Super Legends” line that came out in ’07 with PROO. Or maybe (and this is really wishful thinking) they could be working on their own version of Power Rangers Online, the MMORPG that was announced last month in South Korea. This is all speculation, of course, so we’ll just have to wait for confirmation from Saban.

And while the series name is still mystery, we do have some info on two ACTUAL casting sides for the next Ranger series. The casting sides for the Pink Ranger and the role of the Professor are available for download here, and it looks like from these casting sides that the series will return to it’s high-school-kids-turn-superheroes roots. Yeah, teenagers with attitude!

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!: WE have official confirmation that this is the name of the next series! Check out the copyrights here:

Yep, it’s the application for tradmarks for a live-action television show! We now have a name, let’s see how long it is before we can see a face.

Power Rangers Team-Up Official Announcement!!!: Get in Gear! Go Go Samurai!

The Time has come! For the first time since PROO, we finally have an official crossover event, bringing together the new mythos with the old! It was announced by Saban Brands, along with two other upcoming PRS specials. Here’s the full announcement from Cynopsis Media:

“Marvista Entertainment and Saban Brands will debut three new Power Rangers Samurai TV specials (2×30, 1×60), based on the new TV series of the same name.  Featuring the Samurai Rangers, the new specials include:

  • Christmas Together, Friends Forever – the Rangers reflect on their first year together as a team and learn about the spirit of the season.
  • Party Monsters – a scare-fest when the creepiest monsters from beyond get together for party and trade stories about their battles with the Rangers.
  • The Clash of the Red Rangers – a crossover special where the Samurai Rangers team with the mysterious RPM Rangers Red fend off the dual threat from Master Xandred’s Mooger army and robotic super-villain from the RPM
    Ranger’s dimension.  When something goes awry, the two Red Rangers turn on one another and the fate of the world hangs in the balance.“

Oh boy! A Halloween, Christmas, and Crossover Special! All of this, and it’s not even my birthday! With all of this coming (and considering the fact that these kind of specials haven’t been made in years) we can definitely say without a doubt that Power Rangers is back, and better than ever!

-M.C., the Quantum Twin

Saban Brands picks up Ninja Turtles The Next Mutation: Someone’s trying to get their old stuff back.

  • Just ignore the Toon Disney logo.

Well, it looks like Saban is really going out of it’s way to get back it’s old TV shows, because they just recently acquired distribution rights to Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. This, along with VR Troopers and the Beetleborgs series, were recently picked up by MarVista, the production/distibution side of Saban Brands, for international broadcast and distribution. Apparently, with the new found success of PRS, theirs a new demand from the international market for kid’s action shows with a humorous slant, and what better than one of Saban’s live-action gems to do it?

Anyway, here are a couple of other stories about this:

-M.C., the Quantum Twin