This article is about a/an producer and writer in the Power Rangers franchise.

Bruce Kalish is a former executive producer and head writer of Power Rangers, he joined the series in 2005 when Disney requested a fresh direction for the new season Power Rangers: SPD. Amongst his other credentials include work on Black Hole High, The Fall Guy, Jett Jackson, and The Incredible Hulk.

Kalish's style brought a whole new feel to the series, such as more comedic characters, Rangers with specific catchphrases ("Buttery" for Bridge in SPD, "Plan Xander" for Xander in Mystic Force), larger supporting casts present in the opening credits, and an even greater use of pyrotechnics. The explosions had started in Ninja Storm (and are the work of Koichi Sakamoto's stunt team) but reached greater heights during Kalish's time: hence their nickname of "Kalishsplosions".

He also returned the show to adapting the sentai plots more often, as it had done from Lightspeed Rescue to Wild Force. In regards to the adaptation, Kalish has claimed that his contract with Disney was to adapt the sentai rather than produce original work. He has also recounted that some of the crew ("a nameless director") took the view "why bother, it's just Power Rangers... well, they're not going to work for us then"^[1].

Staying in contact with the fandom for much of 2005, Kalish became the subject of both initial praise and encouragement, to eventual ridicule and hatred from a vast portion for some of his decisions in producing (as well as for admitting he'd deliberately watched no past episodes), leading him to withdraw from consistent communication completely. There had also been a rumour that SPD had gone overbudget, which Kalish has strongly denied (and Disney kept him on the show for three more years). Before withdrawing, he made an appearance at Youmacon where he acknowledged the criticism ^[2] and deadpanned "some people love it and some people hate it and some of the people who hate it still watch it every week to hate it again^[3].

After Jungle Fury, he left the series to work on Aaron Stone, a new live-action series for Disney XD.

In 2009, Jack Olesker attempted to get fans on Rangerboard to make Power Rangers pitches which he could then take to Disney as part of his own proposal ^{[4] [5]}. Kalish heard of it and went to the head of Disney's programming to check it was authorised (as it could have caused major legal trouble for both Disney and Rangerboard); Olesker was sent a cease-and-desist and forced to apologise to the fandom. ^[6]

References

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