‘Power/Rangers’ Bootleg Video Producer Is Back With ‘James Bond: In Service Of Nothing’ Bootleg [Video]

The next officially sanctioned Bond flick, Spectre, won’t hit theaters until later this year, but James Bond fans can get a fix of Agent 007 early if they’re willing to suffer much lower production values. That’s because the producer behind the controversial Power/Rangers video is back, and this time he’s taking on Bond.

Adi Shankar is looking to shake up the entertainment world, and it looks like Shankar might be able to do so twice within a week. Shankar’s newest thorn for Hollywood’s side is entitled James Bond: In Service of Nothing, and it centers on an aging Agent 007 – the Sean Connery version – who “struggles to find his place in a self-absorbed world without boarders [sic],” according to the snippet’s description.

As to those production values, well, the video is far from what you can expect to see when Daniel Craig and Monica Bellucci take the screen in November’s Spectre. In Service of Nothing is something more akin to late-late night Adult Swim fare, with a barely animated storyboard look to it.

The big explosions and exotic locales of a Hollywood tentpole aren’t what Shankar is going for, though, as evidenced by the label tacked onto the title. Shankar’s animated James Bond fan-fiction is the latest in what he calls “Bootleg Universe.” The series includes February’s Power/Rangers video, as well as other one-shot shorts. Shankar’s obviously got no qualms about stepping on others’ intellectual property toes, but the affiliates of the producer revealed in talking to Deadline that the backlash from his Power/Rangers video hasn’t been quite as bad as some might think.

“[Saban Entertainment, owners of the Power Rangers brand] put these disclaimers on so kids don’t confuse our super-violent film with their Power Rangers brand,” Joseph Kahn, who directed the video, told Deadline. “There are no hard feelings… I think they just realized that people just want to see it.”

Kahn’s take might be something of an understatement. The Power Rangers Bootleg pulled in more than 12.5 million total views in a week, and its reappearance on Vimeo may well help the video keep growing in viewership. Shankar may well be hoping that lightning will strike once again with his bleak take on James Bond, but whether that would be a good thing is questionable. It’s nowhere near certain that Sony – or Sean Connery, whose likeness is used – will be quite as forgiving and flexible if this James Bond fan-fiction takes off to a similar degree.