If you ever watched Avatar and thought “Hey, this isn’t nearly nuanced or PC enough,” good news! A Captain Planet movie is coming! We first heard about the project in 2011, when the rights were picked up by the Cartoon Network with plans for a live-action film. That apparently fell through, and now Sony is in final negotiations for the rights. I just hope they combine this with the recent trend towards sociopathic superheroes to give us a dark, gritty eco champion who rips people’s arms off for using energy-wasting incandescent bulbs and keeps a compost pile of dead BP execs in his artist’s loft.
Sony Pictures is in final negotiations to pick up the rights to the early 1990s series for an adaptation to be produced by Mark Gordon, Don Murphy and Susan Montford. Captain Planet told the story of five teens from around the world – North America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and South America (if this isn’t tailored for today’s international marketplace, I don’t know what is) — that are given powers by Gaia, the Earth spirit, in order to protect the planet from the devastation of polluters. When their powers are not enough, the teens combine to summon a superhero named Captain Planet. Gordon is the veteran producer whose credits range from Speed and Broken Arrow to Source Code. He is also the exec producer behind shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Criminal Minds. Murphy, one of the producers behind The Transformers mega-franchise, and Montford are in production on Vampire Academy, the adaptation of the YA novel by Richelle Mead being directed by Mark Waters.
The Planeteers consisted of Kwame (Earth), from Africa, Wheeler (Fire), from Brooklyn, Linka (Wind), from Russia, Gi (Water), from Asia, and Ma-Ti (Heart), a Brazilian raised by a shaman. If you think the right-wing dipshitospher gets pissed about The Muppets and The Lorax, wait till they get a load of this:
“Gi is a self-proclaimed marine biologist and fights against the evils of saline incursion into island chains such as the Maldives. Her compassion for sea life contributes to the overall effort of the Planeteers’ protection of animals, becoming extremely emotional when pollution affects them, especially dolphins.”
“Ma-Ti uses the power of Heart to instill caring, passion, and sympathy into the people of the world to care for the planet. He can also use this power to communicate with animals telepathically.”
HIS SUPERPOWER IS CARING. SERIOUSLY. Then there’s the American one who “is shown to be the least knowledgeable about earth preservation.” Man, I hope the characters are all sexy shirtless ethnic kids a la Twilight and every scene looks like the big dreadlock orgy full of bi-racial Tiger Woodses straight out of The Matrix 2, just to see everyone on Fox and Friends have a simultaneous coronary. “Well, Heart, now that we’ve shot all the world’s guns into space and stopped the military-industry complex from bulldozing this ancient rainforest, let’s gay-marry each other while we piss on the Bible. Take it away, Rabbi Streisand.”
/Obligatory Don Cheadle Captain Planet sketch.