Emilio Estevez Reveals He Wrote “Mighty Ducks 4” To Make Up For The Disney+ Series Mess
Back in 2021, Disney released a brand new series “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers” on Disney+ around the world. The show was based on the ‘90s hit franchise and was set in Minnesota, where the Mighty Ducks have evolved from scrappy underdogs to an ultra-competitive, powerhouse youth hockey team. After 12-year-old Evan is unceremoniously cut from the Ducks, he and his mom, Alex, set out to build their own ragtag team of misfits to challenge the cutthroat, win-at-all-costs culture of competitive youth sports.
The series saw Emilio Estevez return as Gordon Bombay, who helped the team rediscover the joys of playing just for love of the game. The show pulled in enough viewers on Disney+ to warrant a second season.
However, during the filming of the first season of “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers”, the pandemic began, and this resulted in some massive changes for the filming of the second season in 2022 due to health and safety reasons to try to protect the cast and crew. In order to keep production on schedule, Disney required everyone to be vaccinated for COVID-19 and at the time, it was part of the Return-to-Work agreement between the Hollywood studios and major unions.
It was revealed that Emilio Estevez wouldn’t be returning for a second season, because he would not provide assurances to ABC Signature Studios that he would comply with the policy of having a vaccination for COVID-19. At the time, Emilio Estevez’s reps stated that it was a creative decision why he didn’t return for a second season.
The second season continued, without Emilio, though the show didn’t perform as well. Ultimately, the entire series was removed from Disney+ as part of a $2 billion cost-cutting measure to write off hundreds of failed originals to help bring the streaming service into profit.
Recently, Emilio appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and revealed that he had written a script for a fourth “Mighty Ducks” movie, which would have seen “Coach Bombay coming back [and] being pulled back in by Josh Jackson’s character and Kenan Thompson’s character to coach a new team: an expansion team for the professional women’s hockey league. So it would be an all-girl team.”
However, he revealed that while he was enthusiastic for a fourth film, Disney told him that they didn’t want to pursue that idea. Emilio has revealed that he wrote the film because he“wanted to make up for all of the disasters that happened on the Game Changers series”.
Roger’s Take: No doubt this interview will get some people talking, and maybe it has a slightly better chance of happening with Bob Iger back in charge of Disney, since they are much more interested in established franchises. But, honestly, I’m not surprised Disney passed on it, since the “Game Changers” series was already the characters ‘ long-awaited return to the screen, and with all the hassle he caused during the pandemic situation, I’m not surprised they passed on the idea and moved onto something else.
While the “Mighty Ducks: Game Changers” series is no longer available to stream on Disney+, the original movie trilogy is available to stream on the platform.
Would you have liked to seen a fourth “Mighty Ducks” movie? Let me know on social media!
Roger Palmer
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