The long-running show has morphed into many forms over the years: it was established in 1993 as the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, since then the series has gone through 14 more incarnations (not to mention a pair of theatrical movies!) through to 2009's Power Rangers RPM. The shows were originally produced by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy at Saban Entertainment. In 1995 Fox wanted to establish their loosely-named "Fox Kids" lineup as an actual company holding that became "Fox Family Worldwide", and a merger with Saban Ent. was part of that process (generally speaking, it was Fox that produced the two Power Ranger box office films, and it is thought that Fox therefore continues to hold rights to them even now, as a result). In 2001, Fox sold off the "Fox Family Worldwide" subsidiary to Disney, where it became ABC Family Worldwide. With that sale Saban stopped producing any of these series as of Power Rangers Wild Force; mid-show Disney/Buena Vista took over production. But Disney ended production of new episodes in 2009 with RPM, and for the 2010 season only re-purposed the original Morphin' episodes for broadcast. There have been roughly 30 DVD releases in the USA over the years (including the two films), but all have been single-disc releases, often of a "themed"/"best-of" nature; it is rare for any of the 15 Power Rangers programs to have every episode released on DVD in the States. Although Disney-affiliated Jetix has caused season-set releases of various PR incarnations to happen overseas, Disney has shown little interest in doing similar packages in North America. Nor had they come to the negotiating table when "indie" studios (such as Shout! Factory) expressed an interest in licensing the DVD rights. This has been the hold-up for Power Rangers season sets thus far. A week ago, however, it was announced that Haim Saban's newly-formed Saban Brands company had re-acquired the rights to the original 15 programs from Disney. The following day a press release announced that Saban Brands had finalized a deal with Nickelodeon to begin re-airing the existing 700 episodes on the NickToons channel, with a new 16th incarnation of the show planned to broadcast on Nickelodeon and NickToons in 2011. In the past week, we've received e-mails from passionate fans, who assume this means that Nickelodeon/Paramount MUST therefore have the DVD rights to these old episodes, yes? Well, hold on there...don't go assuming that! NOTHING in any of the public announcements has mentioned home videos rights. It's possible that Nick/Par did acquire those rights, on the other hand we know that several indie studio (including Shout!) are speaking to Saban Brands about the possibility of releasing Power Ranger DVDs through their companies. Whatever happens, it won't be immediately (because it still takes time to produce a DVD, of course). We'll keep an eye on it, but right now nothing is assured in the way of a DVD release just yet. However, things are looking up for the first time in a while; perhaps the long wait will soon be over!
