Matt Damon Is Working on a Totally Bonkers Power Rangers-Style Movie

3 min readLast weekend in Pasadena, California, was Power Morphicon, the biennial fan convention for all things Power Rangers. Matt Damon could honestly be a guest at the next one if his next film, scheduled for November 19, 2027, becomes a Mighty Morphin’ hit.On September 3, paparazzi photos surfaced of Matt Damon on the set of his newest movie, an experimental sci-fi film with the rumored title “Thasnagar.” Matt Damon was found wearing a retro superhero costume alongside actors Sandra Oh, Charles Melton, PinkPantheress, and a few unidentified actors. (It is frankly very hard to ID based on the low resolution and the actors’ colorful underhoods.)The movie, written and directed by Daniels—who won a truckload of Oscars for Everything Everywhere All at Once—has been described by Hollywood insider Jeff Sneider (via World of Reel) as “basically a Power Rangers movie” about “a young cast in color-coded costumes who team up to fight kaiju with the help of a superhero-esque character played by Damon.”In July, during the promotional tour of The Odyssey, Matt Damon appeared on The Dan Patrick Show where he described the pitch the Daniels gave him: “The way they pitched it to me was: If The Breakfast Club meets Inception meets an anime film meets an episode of John Oliver ... So if you liked Everything Everywhere All at Once and all the heart, I think you’ll really like this one.”Damon further described it as “a really special project.”While the movie will wear its Power Rangers and tokusatsu influences on its spandex sleeves, it is an original project with no connection to the Power Rangers franchise currently owned by Hasbro. Nor Toei, the Japanese studio that just retired the Super Sentai franchise after fifty years. Hasbro also axed a Power Rangers reboot for Disney+, which was in development with the showrunners of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.One glance at the leaked set photos will get most people thinking “Power Rangers.” But the Daniels have demonstrated their deep interest in this aesthetic before. In 2023, the Daniels oversaw an acclaimed W magazine profile of actress Jennifer Coolidge that took deep inspiration from the Japanese filmmaking style called tokusatsu. (Toe-koo-sat-soo.)Said Daniel Kwan in the W article: “Tokusatsu is so well done, but the special effects are always kind of handmade. If you look at the stuff from the ’60s, you can feel the fingerprint. You can tell there’s somebody inside the costume ... There’s something very charming about that, especially nowadays, when you can create anything digitally and nothing impresses you anymore.”Often characterized by practical special effects like rubber monster costumes, colorful superheroes, and scale-model buildings, tokusatsu also encompasses iconic Japanese franchises like Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai—the latter being the progenitor of the Power Rangers franchise. If you ever want to get lost in an Internet rabbit hole, learning how Power Rangers was made from chopped-up materials sourced from a different kids’ show in Japan is well worth it.If I may put on my nerd hat for a moment—a nerd who’s attended Power Morphicon seven times since 2007—the Daniels are visibly taking a lot of inspiration from Showa-era Sentai. Damon’s costume is an amalgamation of characters like Akaranger (Goranger), Big One (JAKQ), and the original Kamen Rider (note Damon’s tracksuit lining), with a chestplate that looks practically modeled after the Green Ranger’s from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He also has the overall vibe of Infra-Man, from the 1975 Shaw Brothers movie The Super Inframan.While so much of Thasnagar (if that is indeed the title of the movie) remains under wraps, it’s hard to resist what it’s about to serve up. It already looks as nutty as it sounds, with Oscar-caliber directors at the helm and Matt Damon front and center as a Power Ranger. Good thing The Odyssey star knows a thing or two about fighting giant monsters.