Joseph Baxter

Feb 28, 2018

Disney’s dormant film franchise, The Rocketeer, will be revived as an animated series, starring a female hero…

The Rocketeer franchise is ready for another liftoff more than a quarter of a century after it was grounded. While rumblings in recent years have teased a reboot movie and even a straight sequel to the original 1991 film, Disney’s family-friendly genre-mixing action brand will soon manifest as an animated series on the Mouse’s youth-aimed cable platform, Disney Junior.

Disney has announced that production on The Rocketeer animated series has already commenced. The franchise-reviving cartoon will – apropos to its platform – be aimed at young children (ages 2-7,) and families, targeting a release in 2019. The story will draw inspiration from The Rocketeer comic book series of Dave Stevens, which adhered to the original film. However, the series will follow the rocket pack-powered exploits of a young female hero. Each episode will be divided into two 11-minute stories and include an original song. Nicole Dubuc (Transformers: Rescue Bots) spearheads as executive producer.

As the official synopsis reveals:

The Rocketeer follows Kit, a young girl who receives a surprise package on her birthday revealing she’s next in line to become the Rocketeer, a legendary superhero who has the ability to fly with the help of a rocket-powered jet pack. Armed with her cool new gear and secret identity, Kit is ready to take flight and save the day with her gadget-minded best friend, Tesh, and airplane mechanic uncle, Ambrose, who join her on her epic adventures.”

This, of course, stands in stark contrast to director Joe Johnston’s original 1991 film, The Rocketeer, which – set in the 1940s – starred Billy Campbell as a young heroic pilot, named Cliff Secord, who comes into possession of an experimental Howard Hughes-built rocket pack, thrust into a struggle to keep it out of the hands of Nazi spies who would use it to turn the tide of the War. Indeed, besides the protagonist change, Disney Junior’s The Rocketeer series seems to set itself in contemporary times, though adheres to a “legend” of the titular movie hero, possibly serving as a continuation of the movie continuity.  

As Joe D’Ambrosia, senior vice president, Original Programming, Disney Junior, expresses about the series:

“We are very excited to introduce The Rocketeer to our young Disney Junior audience. The vast storytelling found in the original comic books provides the perfect opportunity to create an exciting new adventure series told from a young girl superhero perspective that the whole family can enjoy together.”

Thus, the idea that the series will “introduce” a new generation to The Rocketeer franchise could, in the very least, be seen as a sign that the Mouse is using the cartoon series to till the soil of pop culture for future film plans such as the aforementioned reboot or sequel.

For those too young to remember, The Rocketeer was a HUGE deal, and the Disney media machine heavily hyped the buildup to its release on June 21, 1991. – And for good reason, since the film was an imaginative, optimistic and stylistic cinematic offering that tastefully blended Golden Age comic book adventure tropes. Unfortunately, it debuted on a weekend dominated by Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and City Slickers, which drowned its momentum, making a debut at #4, behind the Julia Roberts/Campbell-Scott-starring drama, Dying Young. Indeed, its box office chances would die young, since a few weeks later, the dominance of Terminator 2: Judgment Day would decimate any chance of a Rocketeer rebound. The film, only released domestically, reaped a final tally of $46.7 million.

The Rocketeer animated series will be produced by Wild Canary in association with Disney Junior. No specific release date has been revealed yet.