Power Rangers Movie Loses Roberto Orci

The upcoming ‘Power Rangers’ movie reboot has been hit by an unexpected setback after executive producer Roberto Orci dropped out of the project due to scheduling issues.

The writer-turned-director was due to oversee the script as well as exec produce the film for Lionsgate, but has pulled out to focus on his directorial debut ‘Star Trek 3’ instead.

Deadline reports that Orci’s departure won’t affect the release date of ‘Power Rangers’, a reinvention of the popular ‘Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers’ TV show that debuted in the 1990s, with the film still slated to be released on 22 July, 2016.

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41-year-old Orci has become a major player in Hollywood over recent years, having co-written studio hits ‘Mission: Impossible III’, ‘Transformers’, and ‘Star Trek’ with his former writing partner Alex Kurtzman, before going solo earlier this year.

He’s due to direct the next ‘Star Trek’ film for 2016 taking over the reins from JJ Abrams who remains on board as producer. Not all ‘Trek’ fans were happy with Orci’s appointment after he took the brunt of the blame for ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’, with the Orci-scripted sequel being voted worst ‘Star Trek’ film ever at a Las Vegas convention last year, despite it being a box office smash.

He took to fan site Trekmovie.com to defend his film after it published an editorial feature titled: “Star Trek is broken — here are ideas on how to fix it.”

He jumped into the comments to say: “Two biggest Star Treks in a row with best reviews is hardly a description of “broken.” And frankly, your tone and attidude [sic] make it hard for me to listen to what might otherwise be decent notions to pursue in the future. Sorry, Joseph. As I love to say, there is a reason why I get to write the movies, and you don’t.”

The ‘Power Rangers’ movie doesn’t have a cast attached yet, but the story is expected to follow the template of the original series which ran from 1993-1996, which saw a group of high school kids imbued with the power to pilot huge assault robots called Zords in order to take on gigantic foes.

Think ‘Transformers’ vs ‘Godzilla’ and you’re on the right track.

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Image credits: Press Association/Saban