Glen Powell Has Discouraging Update on Captain Planet Reboot Movie

Captain Planet is still waiting for his chance to soar on to cinema screens, and it seems that waiting game is about to continue. Per Hit Man and Twisters star Glen Powell, who was previously announced as leading man and co-screenwriter for a Captain Planet movie based on the 1990s TBS animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, it could be some time before the eco-friendly superhero gets to join his heroic brethren on the big screen. This unfortunate development is due to the owners of the Captain Planet property having “other ideas and other plans.”

“I’m very, very passionate about Captain Planet,” Powell told IndieWire. “I want that one to get made … And I feel like we have a very, very strong way into that world and something that I think the world wants to see, but the people that own that property have other ideas and other plans, and that’s fine. Look, I’ll just keep making movies and keep doing what I’m going to do, and eventually, we’ll see if that ever comes back around. But at the end of the day, it’s out of your control.”

A live-action Captain Planet reboot has been in the development stages for years. Glen Powell’s long-standing attachment to the Captain Planet project as both co-screenwriter and star in the titular role would seem to be just what the project needs to escape development hell, especially with Powell’s post-Top Gun: Maverick stardom. However, Powell’s comments suggest that some level of creative differences behind-the-scenes likely accounts for Captain Planet‘s slow progress.

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Powell’s level of stardom, following the monumental success of 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick and his charismatic storm chasing role in 2024’s Twisters, would also likely give him a fair amount of creative leverage on a project like Captain Planet, even if he weren’t also on-board as co-writer. Nonetheless, despite these creative difficulties, as Powell also points out, an eco-conscious superhero like Captain Planet is certainly relevant to the modern world.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers ran for six seasons on TBS in the early to mid-’90s, centering on a collection of multicultural teenagers known as the Planeteers selected by the spirit Gaea. Each member of the group channels a different element through their Planeteer rings, and when uniting their powers, the Planeteers are able to summon the mighty eco-friendly superhero Captain Planet to protect Earth from harm.

At its core Captain Planet had an environmentally conscientious theme in the show’s superhero adventures, and with the rise of the superhero genre in the 21st century, Captain Planet would seem primed for his spot on the big screen. With Powell’s clear enthusiasm for the project, hopefully he and the producers of Captain Planet can soon come to an agreement that allows the movie to finally take off.