After a prolific acting career during the 1980s and 90s, actor Emilio Estevez (The Breakfast Club) has been focused more on directing in the last few years with films like The Public, The Way and Bobby. But nostalgia is a powerful thing, and it looks like Estevez has every intention of taking advantage of that while he can.
For Estevez, that means a trip back onto the ice with some misfit hockey players in The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. The upcoming, live-action series for Disney+ was announced Thursday (Dec. 10) at Disney’s Investor Day along with more than 100 new films and TV shows.
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers continues the legacy of hockey’s finest fowls. 🏒 The series picks up where the films left off. Emilio Estevez returns as Gordon Bombay and @thelaurengraham is joining the flock. Coming to @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/r6JwLDYzmx
— Disney (@Disney) December 10, 2020
Estevez starred in the original 1992 film The Mighty Ducks, the 1994 sequel D2: The Mighty Ducks and the 1996 sequel D3: The Mighty Ducks. He did not participate in the 1996 animated series. In the original movie, Estevez played Gordon Bombay, a Minneapolis lawyer who is sentenced to community service by coaching an unskilled Pee-Wee hockey team. Of course, like most underdog, family-friendly sports movies, Coach Bombay finds a way to connect with the kids and transform them into championship-caliber athletes.
“When you tell somebody you’re working on The Mighty Ducks reboot, it needs no further introduction,” Estevez says on a video presented during Disney’s Investor Day. “We’re going to make a lot of people really happy.”
Joshua Jackson is in The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers trailer!…..well, the 1992 Joshua Jackson. #DisneyPlus #DisneyInvestorDay https://t.co/VnzMFoKLwK
— Peter Bishop Stans 💯 (@CoachJax96) December 11, 2020
In the trailer for the new series, a new team of Ducks is introduced and describe themselves as “a little different than the Ducks of the 90s.” When a group of them aren’t skilled enough to make the team, they decide to form their own group of hockey-star wannabes. Estevez joins up when he’s recruited by a kid’s mom.
We’re not sure if the new Disney+ show will bring back the famous Flying V hockey maneuver the kids use to beat their opponents, but Cobra Kai did bring back the Crane Kick from the original Karate Kid movie, so anything is possible.