Adi Shankar Is Developing An R-Rated Animated 'Power Rangers' Series

There's a new big screen take on Power Rangers coming to shelves next month that looks like it's in the same vein of the Transformers film franchise. The movie shouldn't have any problem luring in kids to check out the latest iteration of the superheroes who originated on television back in the 1990s, but it remains to be seen how many adults will be lured in by their nostalgia.

For those children of the '90s who find themselves disinterested in the new Power Rangers, there might be hope for something drastically different on the way. You might remember that almost exactly two years ago, producer Adi Shankar (executive producer of Dredd and Lone Survivor) released an R-rated Power Rangers short film directed by Joseph Kahn that offered a dark, gritty take on the TV characters. Now Shankar wants to dig deeper with an animated Power Rangers series that has the same mature style.

Find out about the R-rated Power Rangers animated series after the jump.

If you haven't seen the Power Rangers short that Adi Shankar produced, here you go:

Adi Shankar (who is also working on a Castlevania animated series at Netflix) recently sat down with Polygon for an interview, and he brought up development of the R-rated Power Rangers animated series that is described as Power Rangers meets Dragon Ball Z. Shankar explained:

It's a complete retelling of the first three seasons. And it's going to be really fucking dark. Darker than any other Power Rangers series.

The project is early in development with the script for the first season being worked on right now. Shankar is hopeful that the series will be in production in 18 months with supposed interest from several networks. If Shankar had his way, the Power Rangers series would end up at Netflix, and it would fit with the current style of TV shows embracing the long serial format:

Netflix is doing what every other network should be doing. I've worked with almost every network and Netflix just gets it. The world we live in now has disrupted the idea of what entertainment is and Netflix gets it. If you look at what shows are like today, they're long movies. It's a format paradigm and I want to explore creating these types of new shows with Power Rangers.

While an animated Power Rangers series geared towards adults that's in the same vein as Shankar's short film sounds interesting, will Saban ever sign off on the project to allow it to be made? The company had a dispute with Shankar when his short was released, but it was quickly resolved by adding a disclaimer to the front of the short that ensured viewers that it had nothing to do with the official Power Rangers brand. The same could be done here, but with Saban having a whole new film franchise, will they really want a separate series out there which isn't geared towards kids at all?

I wouldn't be surprised if this show never got off the ground, but knowing that Shankar wants to remake the first three seasons of the original series with that dark, gritty style from his short film at least has me intrigued. Seeing the Green Ranger saga unfold in this way would be rather entertaining, but again, I have doubts that this project will ever get off the ground. If you're wondering why Adi Shankar even wants to do something like this, here's how he explained his motivation for the aforementioned short film:

Do any of you out there want to see an R-rated Power Rangers animated series?