It’s been the talk of the Internet for the last couple of days, but the Power Rangers fan movie Power/Rangers has found a powerful enemy. No, not original Green Ranger Jason David Frank, but Saban, the studio behind the show.
According to Power/Rangers director Joseph Khan, Saban have been harassing him to take the movie down, which has already lead to Vimeo taking the movie down. It is still available on YouTube.
“Saban is trying to shut Power/Rangers down,” Kahn tweeted. “If you’d like to keep watching, tell them to stop harassing me.”
Vimeo has taken the movie down after requests from SCG Power Rangers LLC, a division of Saban, who are co-producing the big screen reboot with Lionsgate. Khan however claims Power/Rangers is a parody and well within the fair use doctrine of US law.
“Every image in Power/Rangers is original footage,” he wrote. “Nothing was pre-existing. There is no copyrighted footage in the short. I am not making any money on it and I refuse to accept any from anyone. It was not even kickstarted, I paid for it myself. This was made to be given away for free. It is just as if I drew a pic of Power Rangers on a napkin and I gave it to my friend.”
Power/Rangers features Katee Sackoff as Kimberly and and James Van Der Beek as Rocky. Watch it here.