James Van Der Beek talks about Adi Shankar’s 2015 R-rated Power Rangers short film.
James Van Der Beek has stated that he considers producer Adi Shanker one of his best friends, and has heaped praise upon him for being crazy enough to have the vision to get his ideas made. A recent example of this being Netflix’s Castlevania.
Van Der Beek worked with Shanker on his 2015 R- rated short film version of Power Rangers along with director Joseph Kahn. The actor played a former team member who turned the Rangers over to the Machine Empire. Van Der Beek starred alongside Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff and spoke of how he came to be involved in the short to Inverse;
“I was having dinner with Adi and I think his father and I asked him what he was up to and he was like, ‘Dude, I’m going to make a super dark, hard R re-imagining of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.’ I think my exact response was, ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, I’m in.’”
Shanker also explained his logic behind the idea;
“I want to take a complicated idea and explore it and present the question to the public using these very accessible characters or universes. You say ‘Hey, would you want to watch a deconstruction of the impact of PTSD on being a child soldier?’ Most people are like, ‘No, I don’t want to see that movie.’ But you throw in the context of Power Rangers, people are like, ‘Yo, it’s dope!’”
The actor is clearly impressed with how Shanker approaches getting his work into production;
“Not to get too high minded about it, but history is made by the people who seem crazy at first. Now Adi is in this transition phase where he used to be the crazy guy on the outskirts with only a few people listening to him. Now, because he’s gotten stuff made without really going through the system and getting the edges worked out, now all of a sudden the business has sort of moved towards him.”
Castlevania is currently showing on Netflix.
