Troubled Production / Power Rangers

Due to changing production companies, Executive Meddling and various other problems, it's a miracle that Power Rangers has remained the popular Long Runner franchise it is.

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Before Power Rangers

• It began when Haim Saban caught an episode of Choudenshi Bioman during a business trip to Japan. Saban immediately saw potential for an American adaptation of Super Sentai and produced a short pilot for an adaptation of Bioman. He spent nearly five years pitching the concept to any interested networks, but none were sold until he pitched it to Margaret Loesch of Fox Kids in 1992. He re-edited the pilot with footage from the most recent series, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. The network greenlit the show for a 40 episode run:

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

• Season 1 hit its troubles when it turned out the series was more popular than anticipated. So when Fox Kids ordered an additional 20 episodes for Season 1, Saban asked Toei to make new fight footage from Zyuranger exclusively for Power Rangers, known to fans as Zyu2, due to the original usable Zyuranger being exhausted (even so, they made four Post Script episodes, two of which used Zyuranger episodes they initially skipped over, while the others recycled a lot of already used footage in different context to kill time until they got the Zyu2 stuff). The original plan was to do even more exclusive footage for Power Rangers and introduce upgraded Dinozords, but because of the cost, it was decided to just adapt Dairanger's monster and Megazord footage instead with only 25 Zyu2 fights filmed.
• The last ten episodes of the Zyu2 footage spilled over to Season 2, which created a new problem when Saban and Bandai wanted to introduce new Zords to get new toys on the shelves in time for the holidays. The decision was made to hack the Dairanger mecha footage prematurely, resulting in two different sources of footage being spliced together for the Megazord battles. The mecha from Dairanger would launch an attack and then cut to footage of the Zyu2 monster taking the hit and vice-versa. After the Zyu2 footage was bled dry, the situation was completely reversed. Now, the monsters came from Dairanger, meaning the Megazord battle didn't have to be spliced together, but since most of the Dairanger monster costumes were unusable for American footage and Power Rangers continued to use the Zyuranger costumes, the majority of Dairanger monsters never once appeared on screen with the Rangers. Instead, most of the ground fights were Rangers fighting Z-putties in American footage with the Dairanger monster barking orders in completely isolated footage before Zedd made the monster grow.
• The working conditions were less than savoury. Due to the show being a non-union production, it didn't have to follow the rules of the Screen Actors' Guild. The actors have described the process as five straight days a week of twelve hours filming, the Saturday being used for ADR, Sunday being their only day off and not getting any time off until Christmas (they were granted one week off for that). Haim Saban also pressured the young and inexperienced actors to sign contracts that meant they would make no money off merchandising that used their likenesses (which they still don't get residuals of), and they were paid only about $600 every two weeks (and Audri DuBois, who played Trini in the unaired pilot, was fired for asking for more money). Walter Emanuel Jones, the most experienced of the cast, persuaded the others to enter negotiations with Saban to make the show part of the union - especially once a $40 million feature film (and potential trilogy) entered the equation. Negotiations started and, according to Austin St. John, the entire cast were initially agreed to walk out together unless Saban budged - but Jason David Frank broke the strike, convinced David Yost and Amy Jo Johnson to stay, and negotiated his character becoming The Leader. Eventually, Austin St John, Walter Jones and Thuy Trang walked off the set - and the series hired Steve Cardenas, Johnny Yong Bosch and Karan Ashley to play replacement Rangers. Until they filmed the power transfer episode, they made use of stock footage, body doubles and voiceovers to give the illusion that Jason, Zack and Trini were still there (and not particularly successfully in the eyes of many fans). Austin St John would later return to the series for Zeo only after negotiating a significant pay increase.
• Filming in the Command Centre set was a nightmare for everyone because of how cold it would often get - especially for the actors wearing nothing but thin spandex. Austin St John recalls he and Thuy Trang literally hugging to stay warm between takes.
• Due to the fast-paced production schedule, the replacement Rangers had to start work and move to Los Angeles immediately. They weren't paid for their first two weeks of work, and Johnny Yong Bosch was already broke and couldn't afford food or bedding for that time. He was sleeping "in a pile of clothes" until Karan Ashley (whose family had helped set her up in advance) stopped by his apartment and gave him a pillow. To add insult to injury, they were given the castoff suits from the previous actors, and Johnny Yong Bosch and Steve Cardenas had to have muscle suits built to fit into them. Karan Ashley likewise had to make do with boots two sizes too big for her, and was told to just wear three layers of socks.
• When production ran longer than expected for The Movie, the TV series production was forced to film in Australia, leading to heavy use of stock footage for scenes that required sets they couldn't access at the time, such as the Command Center. Several episodes that had been scripted were scrapped due to the revised schedule.
• David Yost was bullied relentlessly behind the scenes when crew members started to suspect he was gay, overhearing homophobic slurs from the production team, and even being demoted from Ranger to tech advisor in Zeo because the production team didn't think a gay man could be a superhero. He began to contemplate suicide multiple times because of this and, initially planning to wait it out until his contract expired, walked off the set for good when he discovered the producers had been questioning the other cast and crew about his sexuality.
• Amy Jo Johnson suffered several near death experiences due to the low budget stunts (that she had to perform herself), and the show not having to adhere to the SAG rules; including one incident where a malfunctioning prop nearly set her and David Yost on fire. Fears over her personal safety led to her leaving the series in the third season, although she was at least given a ten-episode arc to write Kimberly out, unlike the previous three.
• Karan Ashley decided she wanted to leave too at the end of the third season, unable to handle the hectic production schedule. Promised a ten-episode arc like Amy had been given to write Aisha out, it was cut down to two in favour of the plot point of the Zeo Crystal; resulting in Aisha suddenly deciding to stay in Africa to care for the wildlife and reverting to her adult self offscreen. To this day, the actress is still annoyed about it.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie

• Director Bryan Spicer didn't see the actual series when he was hired. As such, he did a quick "fast-forwarding" run of the series, ensuring things would go wrong.
• During the Ranger suits' development, the helmets were designed without visors or mouth pieces, intending on the heroes showing emotions. It wasn't until a little while later that they realized that they were meant to be a fearless force to be reckoned with and they remolded the helmets to include those missing pieces.
• Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, the original and final choice for Dulcea, was replaced partway by Mariska Hargitay because she needed to have a cyst removed. However, after filming her scenes, which included a training sequence, they fired her because she flew back to America to visit family for Christmas rather than remaining on-call in Australia. Gabrielle was rehired, but they were unable to re-shoot the aforementioned scenes, resulting in an oddity where the Rangers seem to stare at the monument for a while before going (Dulcea was supposed to train them to be ready for it).
• The filming for the final scene where the team is thanked turned into a disaster area when local radio shows caught wind of it and tried to turn it into a "Meet the Power Rangers" contest.
• Originally, Ivan Ooze was meant to mutate a bunch of rats for the Rangers to fight. However, the rat costumes proved to be too low budget even for the actual series, leading to the creation of the Ooze Men. However, the suits were spared and used in "The Return of the Green Ranger" three-parter.
• After production ended, art department electrician Paul Matthews wrote a document which shed light on some of the problems the crew faced.

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie

• During the production of Zeo, Steve Cardenas found out about a pay discrepancy between some of the cast members and, knowing everyone's contracts expired after Turbo, tried to appeal to producers that he and his fellow cast would be paid the same. When they refused, he quit the series, and they wrote Rocky out anti-climactically by getting an injury in a karate competition.
• Initially envisioned as a reunion of the original MMPR cast teaming up with the new Turbo team, it fell apart when Walter Jones and Thuy Trang refused to give up their Guild membership cards to film. The explanation of the Turbo powers was dropped when David Yost left near the end of Power Rangers Zeo. The original cut was actually over three hours long and they were forced to trim it down to under two. Beyond all of that, it was no wonder the movie flopped!

Power Rangers Turbo

• Turbo had production troubles in its first half. Producer Jonathan Tzachor wanted to embrace the source footage Gekisou Sentai Carranger's slapstick comedy and then story editor Doug Sloan wanted to continue Power Rangers Zeo's more serious bent of the franchise growing up. This led to severe Mood Whiplash, like a villain planting bombs that Rangers needed to deactivate before they blew up and kill people while having goofy concepts like Tommy reading the new Megazords' instruction manual. Eventually Doug Sloan left and was replaced with Judd Lynn right when it came time to jettison the old cast (save the new Kid-Appeal Character they just brought in) and replace them with a new cast. Then the crew didn't even have the decency to tell the actors they were all about to lose their jobs, until some of them overheard the makeup team gossiping about it. As Judd Lynn was in agreement on playing closer to Carranger's comedy, the product became a lot more cohesive in the show's second half.

Power Rangers Lost Galaxy

• Lost Galaxy was first planned to be another space-themed series to follow up the success of Power Rangers in Space, only for the crew to find that Lost Galaxy's source material Seijuu Sentai Gingaman was themed around wildlife and nature.
• The Lights of Orion arc, early in the season, turned out be nearly incomprehensible because episodes were still being filmed a week before airdate.
• That arc would have been followed by the Galaxy Book arc, which would have tied into the Galactabeast carrier Zords, and the Pink Galaxy Ranger Kendrix Morgan would've been heavily involved in the story. But then her actress Valerie Vernon developed leukemia, so the writers had to find a way to write her off the show to allow her medical leave and the Galaxy Book arc had to be rewritten in a hurry. Worse, the Galactabeasts themselves hardly showed up in Gingaman, so there wasn't much to work with.
• The original plan was for Patricia Ja Lee (Cassie Chan, the Pink Ranger from the 2nd half of Turbo and In Space), to take over, and for that, Saban filmed a hand-off and an entire episode without Gingaman footage sometimes called "Air Force One on the Megaship", but Patricia soon walked out due to a pay dispute. She was quickly swapped in with Melody Perkins (Karone), which required two more episodes with a lot of US-exclusive footage.
• Still trying to do something resembling the original plan, the final arc had Terra Venture sent to the Lost Galaxy the series had been titled after: it turned out as essentially filler, likely shoving in as much Gingaman footage as possible to save money for the finale. To add insult to injury, the series was pulled before the finale could air; it was later put out as a "special presentation" with little promotion.
• It's likely that Saban suffered some serious financial losses from Lost Galaxy's production — the second season of The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg had been cancelled and its budget reshuffled towards Lost Galaxy, and it still didn't help.

Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue

• While Lightspeed Rescue overall didn't seem to suffer massive issues, the team-up with the previous season... On top of drawing heavily on Super Sentai footage from the counterparts' team-up special, which is rarely done for any team-up, given the diverging plots between Power Rangers and Super Sentai, it was originally released as a video tie-in for McDonald's, explaining why the episode focused more on a child actor than, say, the two teams teaming up. Amy Miller, the actress who portrayed the villain Trakeena, left over a pay dispute after learning the two-parter was also being released on VHS for a McDonald's tie-in. Danny Slavin, who played the Red Galaxy Ranger Leo, stormed off the set with Miller in protest of her lack of a paycheck, and he was audibly redubbed with the voice of another actor at points.

Power Rangers Wild Force

• The anniversary episode "Forever Red" was rife with problems. Originally conceived as a cult attempting to revive Dark Specter, the need to use abandoned Beetleborgs costumes and the want of a super weapon led to the usage of the Machine Empire and Serpentera. Scenes were filmed and cut out (including a bigger role for the Wild Force team outside of their brief cameo) and a major battle between classic Megazords and Serpentera were scuttled when Bandai insisted that Cole use a vehicle he gained just an episode earlier, leading to a Curbstomp Battle. Also, as mentioned above, Leo's actor Danny Slavin, who generally had a pretty sour case of Creator Backlash due to his experiences on Lost Galaxy and the Lightspeed Rescue team-up episode, had only agreed to appear after the producers called in some personal favors, where by then, most of the episode had already been shot. Hence his very late arrival, and the awkward bit where he demorphs just so the big morphing sequence can include all ten Rangers.

Disney seasons in general

• As a whole, the Disney-era Power Rangers series suffered from Troubled Production. It was bought up when Disney attempted to get the Fox Family Channel and Saban's collection of series (specifically Digimon) and the series as a whole clashed with Disney's family-friendly attitude. While they did show some care during the early years, their apathy soon started to show. They attempted to shut down the series at least three times and even attempted to start up an animated version to avoid paying Toei money.

Power Rangers: Dino Thunder

• Dino Thunder didn't get hit too bad as the rest of the seasons, but Jason David Frank wanting to spend some time back with his family and run his martial arts school in the United States (filming had moved to New Zealand since Power Rangers Ninja Storm) forced them to create a scenario where Tommy is trapped in his morphed state, then invisible. Like the Karone incident, it did lead to an awesome moment.
• Production also had to change course when Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger's apparent Sixth Ranger, AbareMax, turned out to be a powerup for the Red Ranger. The initial plans were that Devin was going to be the Triassic Ranger.

Power Rangers S.P.D.

• Executive Meddling led to a good chunk of the SPD budget being placed onto the series finale, which had a major CGI battle with the SWAT Megazord. However, this led to them being unable to do a number of things, including hiring an actor for Sixth Ranger Sam, the Omega Ranger. As well, many episodes were taken wholesale from its Super Sentai counterpart Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger.
• When Canada accidentally aired the second crossover episode between SPD and Dino Thunder, ABC held back that part for a good length of time before finally letting it air. Speaking of that episode, budget problems led to them to not even consider bringing back Jason David Frank who was back in the States. Frank has stated he was never asked to return. He was never seen out of his suit, and his voice was shemped by Trent's actor Jeffery Parazzo, as they couldn't afford to bring in a specially cast voice actor and Parazzo was already available.

Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

• Operation Overdrive was hit by budget cuts from Disney, forcing the creators to make more Super Sentai footage-heavy episodes.

Power Rangers Jungle Fury

• Jungle Fury was hit by the Writer's Guild of America Strike. Unlike other examples that were affected by the strike, several non-union writers (scabs) were hired by Disney to finish most of the show with the WGA writers returning with four episodes remaining to write. It actually worked out fairly well as Jungle Fury is (at least) seen as a step back in the right direction after years of declining quality.

Power Rangers RPM

• Disney's apathy towards Power Rangers came to a dramatic end with the production of RPM. Chronicled in part in History of Power Rangers, Bruce Kallish had decided to move onto a new project, and Disney planned on finally cancelling Power Rangers, but Bandai Europe had Disney under contract for one more season. To that end, a new producer was brought on: Eddie Guzelian. The only problem? Guzelian was primarily an animated creator, putting him into a new role entirely with not only dealing with live action conventions, but the unique production way the Super Sentai/Power Rangers transition works.
• To his credit though, Guzelian did watch several episodes before production began, getting a feel for the show, and trying to take the franchise in a new direction by pitching a Darker and Edgier post-apocalyptic series to try and revitalize interest among not only boys, but also to an older audience as well. The only problem? The Super Sentai series they were working off of, Engine Sentai Go-onger was remarkably comedic in nature, even compared to other series. For example, all the Engines (Zords) are sentient vehicles from a parallel universe and they appear as unique characters that have chibi anime spirits. So they ended up in a similar situation to Lost Galaxy in trying to splice one series into another entirely different situation.
• On top of this, there were script delays going into production, in part due to the difficulty in writing around the Super Sentai footage, and rumors of production overshot in part due to a higher use of live footage instead of stock footage.
• And to top it off, Guzelian was fired during production and two of the writers quit in protest. Old Power Rangers alumnus Judd Lynn was brought in to help finish the production, forcing him to do a behind-the-scenes episode to buy himself some time to catch up with the work. All in all, not exactly the easiest production to do, only compounded by the fact Disney kept hiding RPM in its scheduling due to its lack of edutainment and higher violence levels putting some executives off. Even though Power Rangers wasn't renewed under Disney's management afterwards, the fact that this production could even be finished with all the issues it had, and be well regarded by older fans as well is quite the feat. Not helping matters was Eddie Guzelian's firing happening literally as he'd finished working out the direction the second half of the series would go in, and apparently Disney never bothered to contact him so that he could relay his planned storylines to Judd Lynn. Several cast members, most vocally Adelaide Kane and Ari Boyland, bluntly expressed their dislike of the direction the series went in.

Nickelodeon seasons in general

• When the Power Rangers franchise was bought back by Saban Brands, it channel hopped over to Nickelodeon, where it was slapped with a "20 episodes per season" limit that split each adaptation in half, ^note Rangers is one of the few shows to exceed the typical 22-episode limits of American television, often having 32 to 40 episodes per season, which is still less than Super Sentai's typical 50 and a massive summer hiatus. This didn't affect Power Rangers Samurai too badly, when it retitled itself as Super Samurai for a 2nd season, but it created a cascade of problems that piled up and broke the back of Megaforce.
• Since Nickelodeon took over, several Super Sentai series have been skipped entirely for Power Rangers adaptations:
  • Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters (initially skipped over after Super Megaforce to jump to Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger for Dino Charge/Dino Super Charge, though later revisited for Power Rangers Beast Morphers)
  • Ressha Sentai ToQger
  • Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger
  • Uchu Sentai Kyuranger (later revisited for Power Rangers Cosmic Fury)
  • Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger

Power Rangers Samurai

• A feature on Den Of Geek with story editor James W. Bates confirmed that Jonathan Tzachor was responsible for the extensive rewrites of fifteen episodes to make Samurai a carbon copy of Shinkenger.

Power Rangers Megaforce

• James W. Bates stayed on for this season, which was hit by problems in about every area except the filming.
• Power Rangers found itself slipping further behind the Super Sentai source material after the delay in bringing Samurai to television and forcing the Super Samurai second season. The next shows in line were Tensou Sentai Goseiger, a rather mediocre season whose theme was guardian angels protecting the Earth from alien invaders, and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, the Japanese franchise's 35th anniversary Milestone Celebration featuring pirate-themed rangers who could morph into past rangers and use their powers. Although Gokaiger's 35th anniversary would dovetail nicely with the 20th anniversary of Power Rangers, Saban was apparently not allowed to simply skip Goseiger and go straight to Gokaiger. Furthermore, the production staff was concerned that Goseiger's angel-motif and Gokaiger's pirate one weren't viable for a two-year shelf life. In an attempt to square the circle and catch up to Sentai, Saban decided to fold together the two series, starting with Goseiger for Megaforce and moving to Gokaiger for the second half of the season, Super Megaforce to line up the respective anniversaries.
• Bates was not keen on this approach, but relished the opportunity to write original stories. Unfortunately, Jonathan Tzachor shot down many of his ideas, such as his plans for the Power Rangers' civilian lives. Furthermore, other members of the production staff were on board with carbon-copying Super Sentai plots rather than make their own. During Super Megaforce, he faced new complications such as which footage to use and editing scripts he had no prior knowledge of. He resigned as story editor, but was persuaded to compress Goseiger's five-part finale into the two-parter "Vrak is Back".^note Bates planned to have Vrak as a recurring villain; his departure scrubbed those plans.
• Furthermore, squeezing 100 episodes of two different shows into a single 40-episode show created massive pacing problems. Episodes typically crammed in loads of Stock Footage, resulting in fights that could take as much as fifteen minutes. This left little for Character Development. Additionally, combining the Stock Footage of the Lighter and Softer Goseiger with the Darker and Edgier Gokaiger created wildly inconsistent characterization, with characters bouncing back and forth from calm and stoic to hyper and energetic and vice versa (the Pink Ranger got the worst of this). The cast begged the producers to let them do more than fight scenes but were shot down every time. The producers brushed aside any concerns from the cast or crew about the show's lack of rhyme or reason with "Who cares? The audience is five years old."
• Super Megaforce kept Gokaiger's past Ranger morphs along with several Super Sentai teams that never actually made it to North America who simply appeared with no explanation outside of being "new powers". On top of all this, the anniversary aspect left the door open to cameos and appearances from past Rangers (as happened in Gokaiger). Of the hundred or so actors who played Power Rangers in the past 20 seasons, they brought back roughly 10, with actor after actor announcing they weren't returning either because they simply weren't asked or they declined the (apparently really bad) offer, and some of those that did return didn't even have speaking parts to show for it. An anniversary season with an interesting theme and incredible Stock footage built right in has sadly turned into a massive case of What Could Have Been.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers

• When Hasbro bought the franchise in 2018, its first adaptation was of the 2012 Sentai, Go-Busters. But because the series ended five years before production of Beast Morphers began, many of the monster suits had significantly deteriorated in the meantime or had possibly been repurposed into other monsters leading for many of them to be completely remade. According to a director, the Ranger suits suffered from this too as, by the time they filmed the finale, the pants of two of them were being held together with black tape because they had literally come apart at the seams.

Power Rangers Dino Fury

• According to an interview, Dino Fury ended up experiencing some difficulty in being written since it was being written while the Sentai was still airing and they didn't know how the footage would play out. This is an issue the franchise has had in the past, with the hiatus between Power Rangers RPM and Power Rangers Samurai and the seasons from there on being stretched out over two years giving more of a gap for production to use until Dino Fury skipped over several Sentai to use the most recent one.
• Producer Simon Bennett revealed that due to the contract with Nickelodeon being set for one year at the time production started, Dino Fury was originally written out as a single 22-episode season. When the second season was set up to be streamed solely to Netflix, the episode count doubled and in order to keep the structure of the seasons consistent a fair amount of filler episodes and a major plot point ( the return of Lord Zedd) had to be slotted in.
• The series is filming during the COVID-19 Pandemic. While New Zealand has been lauded as having some of the best responses and recoveries from the pandemic, those are due to its strict lockdowns—two have which went into effect during filming as a precaution, causing production to shut down for three days and later one week.

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