'Power Rangers' Director Has Ideas for a Prequel About Rita and Zordon

Power Rangers just hit theaters this weekend, but already, people are talking about the sequel… and the four or more movies that are going to come after that. The director, Dean Israelite, has lots of plans for the franchise, but he says that not all of them involve the main team of Angel Grove teens that audiences got to know in the just-released origin story.

While speaking to Entertainment Weekly in an interview published on Friday, Israelite explained that he was kicking around lots of different ideas for follow-up movies. “As you know, the universe is so expansive,” he said. “There’s a lot to draw from.”

One of the stories that Israelite’s interested in exploring is the history of the Rangers’ mentor, Bryan Cranston’s Zordon and their greatest foe, Elizabeth Banks’s Rita Repulsa.

“Zordon has a lovely, robust backstory, as does Rita. Imagine a prequel that was all about Zordon and Rita and their relationship and their Power Ranger team,” Israelite told EW. “There is a way to branch off into other parts of the mythology that this film tees up that were never truly explored in the show.”

In the movie, we learn pretty early on that Zordon and Rita were teammates in the distant past, and they were both Power Rangers until Rita broke bad. Hollywood loves a villain origin story.

Power Rangers isn’t in need of possible storylines. There are tons of plots from the classic TV show that the movie series can mine for sequel fodder. Still, if Israelite is interested in exploring the film’s prehistory, there might be a story — and a movie — there.