Disney’s live-action ‘Power Rangers’ series gets disappointing update
‘Power Rangers’ fans just got some disappointing news. Disney+ has decided against the live-action series, with the project not moving beyond the development stage, according to Deadline. The series, which was written and executive-produced by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz (the showrunners behind ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’), had been in development for about a year and a half, with 20th Television as the studio. Earlier reports indicated that Disney+ had begun development on the project in March 2025.
According to the publication, the cancellation was driven not by creative concerns, but rather by financial ones. A live-action superhero series can be expensive to produce, and those costs can quickly add up, especially if the streaming service that funds it doesn’t own the intellectual property (IP). In this case, ‘Power Rangers’ belongs to Hasbro, not Disney.
Meanwhile, Hasbro has had multiple attempts at developing a live-action ‘Power Rangers’ series, but it has not been easy. Before Disney+, Netflix attempted to develop a live-action project, with showrunner Jenny Klein (‘Daisy Jones & the Six’) and Jonathan Entwistle on board to direct. That deal also fell through, and the last time the show appeared on live-action television was when ‘Power Rangers Dino Fury’ was released on Netflix in 2021. It was rebranded as ‘Cosmic Fury’ for its third season. Even the latest big-screen revival of the franchise had a tough time at the box office. The 2017 ‘Power Rangers’ film grossed about $142 million worldwide on a production budget of roughly $100 million.
For the unversed, ‘Power Rangers’ is a superhero action TV series that follows ordinary high schoolers who are called upon to become superheroes. Each one is gifted with a ‘morpher,’ a device used to transform them into their color-coded hero identities - Red, Blue, Yellow, Pink, Black, and more. In addition, when the need arises, they can pilot huge robot dinosaurs or animals called Zords, which come together to form the super robot Megazord for the final battle with a monster-of-the-week.
