Sony is in final negotiations to lock up the rights to Captain Planet for a film reboot. Children of the ’80s now have a choice. You can get on board now and be excited about it, or you can jump on your favorite comment thread and lament your ruined childhood. The power is yours!
We assume our regular readers are already down with CP, but for anyone who needs a refresher in ’80s cartoon eco-justice, Captain Planet tells the story of five teenagers called the Planeteers. Four of them have the power to control the elements, and then there’s Ma-Ti. His power is “Heart,” which is useless, but he gets a monkey so it evens out.
The kids fight pollution and try to get pollution-themed supervillains to stop poisoning the Earth. Like so many superpowered teenage teams before them, when their powers aren’t enough they combine to summon a force greater than themselves: Captain Planet — a pollution-fighting superhero whose only weakness is actually pollution itself.
Oh, and sometimes they fight Nazis.
Things are still in the very early stages for the movie, meaning they have producers attached and nothing else. The project is being produced by Mark Gordon, Don Murphy, and Susan Montford. They have some major titles between them like Speed, Broken Arrow, and Transformers, so there’s probably a better than average chance of this thing actually happening.
This isn’t the first time someone’s put their power rings together to summon a Captain Planet reboot. An attempt in the ’90s only made it as far as a script, and earlier Murphy and Montford tried to get a live-action Captain Planet show going on Cartoon Network. They must really like Captain Planet. It’s probably because of his sweet mullet.
We just spent a good chunk of our morning in the office talking about Captain Planet, so Sony, if you’re looking for pitches give us a call. We’ve got a great coming of age origin story ready to roll. Or you could just adapt that Funny or Die video:
(via The Hollywood Reporter, image via Zachary Long)
- The Planeteers are the same kids from The Magic School Bus
- Flavor Flav has in a different eco-friendly cartoon show
- Chris Hadfield reminded everyone about Earth Hour from space
