Saban Capital Group Power Rangers LLC, the company that owns the rights to the Power Rangers IP, is seeking to take down the recently released (and extremely gritty) 14-minute short film based on the children's television series, TMZ reports.
Power/Rangers, which was uploaded yesterday by producer Adi Shanker, remains online via YouTube; however, the original Vimeo video release has since been taken down after receiving complaints from Saban Brands. Shankar's representative Ash Venkatram told TMZ that the team will keep the video on YouTube until they are sent a formal cease and desist letter.
"Saban is trying to shut Power/Rangers down," the film's director Joseph Kahn wrote in a tweet earlier today in response to complaints from the IP owners. "If you'd like to keep watching, tell them to stop harassing me."
In later tweets, Kahn explained his legal stance on the matter, writing in a series of tweet: "Every image in Power/Rangers is original footage. 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. Is it illegal to give pic I drew of a character on a napkin to someone for free? No."
The film is an impressively not-safe-for-work take on the long-running series, and features both Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek and Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff. You can check it out in full below, at least until it disappears.