History of Saban Part 2
by Kurt Yoder,
The following year, the two companies would score a huge hit with X-Men: The Animated Series, which saw the debut of music composed by Ron Wasserman for Saban. The success of the X-Men series led Margaret Loesch to see about other ideas that Haim Saban and his company had to offer, and during one of these meetings, Saban pulled out his old pilot for Bioman which Loesch immediately recognized.
Before Saban had made his attempt to bring over Super Sentai in 1986, Margaret Loesch, along with Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee, had attempted to shop around an adapted pilot of the 1981 series Taiyo Sentai Sun Vulcan and dealt with the same disinterest from TV producers back then as well. Now with Loesch in his corner, Saban worked on a new adaptation of the current Super Sentai series Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger initially under the new name of "Galaxy Rangers" before settling on the name Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and shooting a pilot with new actors, while keeping some of the names from the original Bioman pilot. With a lot of focus testing and Margaret Loesch working hard to convince Fox Broadcasting and News Corp, as well as the network affiliates that the show was worth picking up. When the show finally debuted on Fox stations in the fall of 1993, it became an overnight sensation that no one could have imagined.
As popular as the show was, it received numerous complaints for being considered too violent and was pulled from TV in Canada, Sweden, and New Zealand. Saban Entertainment thought the complaints and accusations that the show “encouraged resolving conflict through fighting” were ridiculous and overblown. The success of the series saw Fox renewing the show immediately for a second season, and Saban Entertainment would forgo paying Toei to film more footage for them and begin adapting footage from the next Super Sentai series, Gosei Sentai Dairanger, to keep the show moving. This practice would continue with every subsequent season of the show. The second season would also introduce the first original villain created for Power Rangers with Lord Zedd, voiced by the late Robert Axelrod, who would continue to be a part of the show through the next two seasons with the first season villain Rita Repulsa, voiced by Barbara Goodson.
The show's popularity would see the series being adapted into a live-action film by 20th Century Fox in 1995 between the second and third seasons. Keeping the original series cast members, and with a modest budget, the film did well at the box office while being disliked overall by film critics. Power Rangers would continue for numerous years and was making Bandai, Fox, and Saban a lot of money, something that sadly was not shared with the cast of the series.
While Power Rangers had made its young, unknown cast of actors household names, the series was a non-union production, and the cast and crew were not privy to union protections or pay rates. Many of the cast were working for wages as low as $600 a week while performing their own stunts and putting in long hours on sets and at publicity events while not having managers or lawyers for protection. The cast didn't receive any royalty for the sales of merchandise, which was nearly a billion dollars in its first year. Many on the cast faced numerous instances of nearly being physically hurt on set, including original Pink Ranger actress Amy Jo Johnson nearly electrocuted during the filming of the second Power Rangers feature film as well. These low wages lead to prominent cast members Austin St. John, Thuy Trang, and Walter Emanuel Jones to walk off set early during the second season, with the show writing the three leads out and replacing them with new cast members Steve Cardenas, Karan Ashley, and Johnny Yong Bosch.
The problems on set would continue throughout the show's production, with original cast member David Yost walking off set during the show's fourth series Power Rangers Zeo over homophobic and hostile attitudes from the production crew. Unfortunately, these exploitation issues around the series' production would continue throughout many of Saban's series. SAG issued a statement in 1998 condemning Saban Entertainment for exploiting its cast and forbidding union actors from working on any Saban Productions at the time. Around this time, 10 composers at Saban Entertainment, including Ron Wasserman, would attempt to sue the company for years of taking credit and royalties for their work. Saban would settle with the composers by giving them each only $10,000, with Haim claiming that this was more than fair because they never had a case they could win.
In the fall of 1995, the third season of Power Rangers would begin with a multipart episode serving as a backdoor pilot for Saban's Masked Rider. Adapted from the 1989 series Kamen Rider BLACK RX, Masked Rider featured the prince of an alien planet named Dex, who travels to Earth after his encounter with the Rangers to fight alien warlord Count Dregon. Dex becomes the adopted son of an interracial family with adopted children, and his alien pet Ferbus also comes along while he gets up to antics while fighting the invaders as Masked Rider. The series would not fare as well as the other tokusatsu adaptations, as the wacky sitcom plots haphazardly mixed with the Kamen Rider fight footage, made for a strange show that ended after only a single 40-episode run; no attempt at a U.S. adaptation of Kamen Rider would happen again until Toei's own attempt with Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight in 2008.
The following fall would see another attempt at adapting Metal Hero with Big Bad Beetleborgs, using footage from the recent Juukou B-Fighter series, Beetleborgs featured three young, comic book obsessed kids wandering into a haunted house and freeing a phantasm named Flabber who grants them their wish to become their favorite comic book heroes. The wish also brings the villains of the comic to life, so now the three kids fight off the villains while getting up to kid stuff at the local comic book store and dealing with Flabber and his horror movie monster friends at the haunted house. The show aimed at a younger audience than Power Rangers and did well for itself, getting renewed for a second season Beetleborgs Metallix, adapted from B-Fighter Kabuto for 1997. The next Metal Hero series B-Robo Kabutack, went with much more cartoonish mascot costumes and the production decided it wasn't worth trying to adapt them.
Power Rangers would wrap up its fourth season, Power Rangers Zeo, at the end of 1996 and, in the spring of the following year, would release the second theatrical film, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie directed by Shuki Levy. Made to set up the next season of the series, Power Rangers Turbo, the film underperformed severely at the box office, and the show started to sag in the ratings. The middle of the series would see the remaining former cast members of previous shows all replaced with new characters taking over as the Rangers; most of this cast would continue into Power Rangers in Space, which would save the series from being canceled and continue into the new millennium.
Other adaptations Saban made in the mid-1990s included Eagle Riders, adapted from the Gatchaman sequel series Gatchaman II and Gatchaman Fighter; this attempt to try and capture some nostalgia from those who grew up on the 1978 Battle of the Planets adaptation of the original Gatchaman and get kids of the '90s into the series didn't land with either demographic. Saban also adapted Tatsunoko Pro's Tekkaman Blade for UPN's new kids' block under the name Technoman; this dub would feature Power Rangers actor Paul Schrier voicing the series lead villain and new music by Ron Wasserman too. Both series would only air briefly in US syndication before disappearing completely from the airwaves, but both would air in full later in Australia.
Saban continued their original live-action productions throughout the decade as well; they had a modest hit TV series with an adaptation of the popular Sweet Valley High book series beginning in 1994 and running for four seasons. In 1997, Saban would once again attempt to capitalize on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and attempt their hand at an original tokusatsu style series, with a live-action series Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. The short-lived live-action show filmed in Vancouver introduced a fifth turtle to the group, Venus de Milo, and new villains alongside Shredder and the Foot Clan. Despite a strange crossover episode with Power Rangers in Space, the series failed to find an audience and ended after 26 episodes.
Plans for a second season of Mystic Knights were halted when Saban decided to put the budget allocated for the series towards other projects. After originally being planned as the last season of the series, 1998's Power Rangers in Space had pulled in strong ratings again for the franchise, and Saban greenlit the next season as Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. Saban also began work on an upcoming English dub of a popular kids' anime series involving battling monster friends in 1999.
One thing that made Digimon stand out at the time was this adaptation didn't shy away from or attempt to hide the fact its characters were Japanese kids from Japan; while the show would undergo many of the usual editing practices at the time for network broadcasting, the cast of the English dub featured a great cast and performances. The dub cast would also include Haim's step-daughter Tifanie Christun as the voices of both Biyomon and Yolei in the series, as well as a new score from composer Udi Harpaz. Continuing with the second season into the year 2000, 20th Century Fox and Saban released Digimon: The Movie into movie theaters, edited together from three separate Digimon theatrical shorts and doing decently at the box office This would be the last time Saban would be involved with the theatrical release of an anime series.
Between the main Fox Kids block and the Fox Family Channel at the turn of the millennium, Saban would continue making Power Rangers series, as well as the TV movie and series reboot The New Addams Family, and the very short-lived oddity Los Luchadores, a series about Lucha libre wrestlers who are also superheroes, with white Canadian actors who were not actual professional wrestlers. Saban also continued producing cartoons for Fox as well with Marvel Comics-based series Silver Surfer, The Avengers: United They Stand, and Spider-Man: Unlimited. They also produced a cartoon series about professional race car driving with a sci-fi flare with NASCAR: Racers.
The year 2000 would also see one of the most questionable attempts from Saban and Bandai to adapt a notable anime series for the sensibilities of the Fox Kids block with their attempt of airing The Vision of Escaflowne, simply retitled as Escaflowne, this adaptation would see the beloved Sunrise series first episode being skipped over entirely, as the network thought it was too slow. Numerous changes to the series would happen, from extensive editing to remove violence, whole scenes being moved around from different episodes to create flashbacks, and also trying to downplay Hitomi as the lead character. The Fox Kids airing would also see a lot of Yōko Kanno's iconic original score for the series changed around and new techno-style music compositions added as well. These new songs were composed by Inon Zur, then an in-house composer at Saban Entertainment, who would become a well-known video game composer. The messiness of this adaptation did not fare well on the network and was canceled after about 10 episodes had aired on Fox Kids; the edited dub version of the series would only air in full on YTV in Canada. A similar edited dub pilot was commissioned for The Slayers by Saban around this time, but Fox Kids declined to pick up the series, and this project was shelved.
While these successes were happening on Fox Kids on the main network, the fledgling Fox Family Channel was floundering badly. The former older audience for The Family Channel, used to watching reruns of older television shows and westerns, had left in droves, and the network struggled to pick up new viewers with its new aim towards younger audiences. Having written a clause into his ownership contract on the network and now seeing the writing on the wall for one of the few times his television work failed, Saban decided it was time to sell his stake and find a new buyer, which will be discussed in the final part of this lookback at Saban Entertainment.
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