It’s Morphin Time for new Power Rangers film

One of Israel’s most colorful, morphable and supercharged exports, the Power Rangers franchise, is getting renewed on the big screen: “The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” Haim Saban’s wildly popular 1990s TV series, is headed for a feature film remake.

Saban, an Egyptian-born media mogul who grew up in Israel and has carefully built a multi-billion-dollar Hollywood production empire over the past three decades, is partnering with Lionsgate Films to create a live-action version of the colorful crusaders’ tale.

The Power Rangers centers around a group of ordinary young people who each discover they have an individual superpower, and when they join forces and pool their mighty resources, they become invincible. The original series hit American television in 1993, five years after Saban launched his immensely successful Saban Entertainment Group; a number of TV and film spinoffs followed.

In a statement carried by the Los Angeles Times, Lionsgate Chief Executive John Feltheimer said, “The Power Rangers stories and characters have been embraced by generations of audiences for more than 20 years, and today they are more powerful than ever.”

It’s been a busy week for Saban; according to The Hollywood Reporter, the billionaire is also considering buying both the Hotel Bel Air and the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel from Bahrain’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. The properties, which have long served as boltholes for Hollywood’s richest and most famous, have found themselves at the center of a boycott and firestorm after Bahrain passed a series of harsh Shariah laws.