By your powers combined, Captain Planet is back. The iconic animated eco-hero of the 1990s is going to take pollution down to zero in live-action in a new Netflix TV series. The streamer won the rights to the project at a competitive auction. Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Appian Way Productions is working on the series: no surprise, given the star’s notable commitments to environmental causes. Greg Berlanti‘s Berlanti Productions is partnering with them, adding yet another property to their list of superheroic projects.
Deadline reports that Glen Powell will is not currently involved in the project: the Anyone But You star had been attempting to get a live-action Captain Planet project off the ground for years. However, Jono Matt, who was co-writing the project with Powell, is listed as a producer on the new series. The series will be spearheaded by Tara Hernandez, a veteran of The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon who co-created the artificial intelligence science fiction dramedy Mrs. Davis for Peacock. It will be the first superhero property DiCaprio has produced, but it’s Berlanti‘s bread and butter: he co-created the DC Comics TV series Arrow, kicking off the interconnected family of DC shows known as the Arrowverse. Berlanti also produced the unrelated DC series Titans and Doom Patrol.
What Is ‘Captain Planet and the Planeteers’ About?
The brainchild of tycoon and conservationist Ted Turner, Captain Planet and the Planeteers premiered on Turner‘s own TBS, and in syndication, in 1990. It revolved around an international team of teenagers: Wheeler, Kwame, Linka, Gi, and Ma-Ti, who were gathered together by the goddess Gaia and given five rings with the respective elemental powers of fire, earth, wind, water, and heart (long story). They could use them individually, or combine them to summon the blue-skinned, green-haired, wisecracking embodiment of the Earth, Captain Planet (David Coburn). They battled to defend the planet from corporate profiteers, polluters, mad scientists, and space aliens for six seasons. The series was notable for attracting a number of celebrity voice actors to voice its heroes and villains, including LeVar Burton, Whoopi Goldberg, Meg Ryan, Jeff Goldblum, Ed Asner, and Martin Sheen.
Although the show aired its last new episode in 1996, it lived on in reruns and the fond memories of millennials. The series returned to cross over with Cartoon Network‘s OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes in a special episode in 2017; Burton and Coburn reprised their roles. Last year, Dynamite Comics resurrected the franchise in a new comic book series by writer David Pepose and artist Eman Cassallos.
Netflix‘s Captain Planet series is in development; no casting or release date has yet been announced.
via Collider