Captain Planet The Movie (Dark Planet)1997 pitch and history

The internet has been talking about a Captain Planet movie for years and for some reason a live action movie was in production for a while which was announced a few years back but whatever happened to that? It kept going into development hell and almost cancelled. That was until recently Leonardo DiCaprio has apparently saved the project who has actually been active in the enviromental community for more than a few years now. Now if this project will actually amount to anything even with DiCaprio’s support we don’t know or if it’ll include Don Cheadle. But Captain Planet almost had an animated movie called Planet in the 90s.

From what we can see from the video and on interviews online we know that it was meant to be released in the mid 90s and the project kept changing names from Planet to Dark Planet. It would’ve been a darker interpretation that took place in a post apocalyptic future. The mergers that Ted Turners company went through didn’t help the movie and it was eventually shelved and nothing. The Mother Nature Network actually has a bunch of information and videos on Captain Planet production on their website and youtube

As you can see from the designs, this was going to be a very different movie from the show. The darker aspect would’ve been cool to see but man were those designs dated even by 90s standards. While some of the design choices seem ok like giving Ma-Ti long hair and Linka short hair; Hell I actually like Gi’s crazy looking hair but none of the characters look quite right. They are called the “new” planeteers and based on the designs it could mean that maybe it had nothing to do with the tv show and would be a re-telling of the origins in a darker world but we’ll never know now.