A brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is on the way, the seventh Turtles film to head to the big screen – details here.
by Matt Edwards, Ninja Turtles editor
This pizza we’re eating is celebration pizza. We didn’t just happen to be eating pizza when this story broke. How dare you even suggest that. Let’s just toast crusts and move on, shall we?
Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and James Weaver will produce a new CG Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie with production company Point Grey pictures for Nickelodeon. The film is going to be directed by Jeff Rowe, a writer for Gravity Falls and co-director of the upcoming Lord and Miller produced Connected. It’ll be written by Brendan O’Brien, who co-wrote the Bad Neighbours movies and the underrated Amy Poehler/Will Ferrell comedy The House. This all comes from this report from Deadline.
Sounds good to us.
It’s not yet known whether this will run alongside the Michael Bay-produced Platinum Dunes movies. 2016’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows underperformed financially (this writer quite liked it, mind) and reports of screenwriters attempting a new take for them seem to have died off over the last year or so. That might be it for the Platinum Dunes Ninja Turtles, we suspect.
The Turtles most recently appeared in last year’s brilliantly fun Batman Vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and we’re expecting a feature version of current cartoon series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Netflix at some point, too.
This new version will be the Turtles’ seventh big screen outing, and second feature length CG movie. Animated movie TMNT, from Kevin Monroe, was released back in 2007. It’s better than its reputation might suggest, an enjoyable, pacey and funny affair. A sequel to that film had been planned but never ended up happening.
It’s also worth noting that the 2012 Nickelodeon CG animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles put together an entire series of mini-movies, including a time-travel monster mash, a samurai team up with Usagi Yojimbo and a Ninja Turtle take on Mad Max. That series, from Ciro Nieli, is the best take on the Turtles since the 1990 live action movie. Perhaps someone could get a boxset to Seth Rogen. Should we try to send one to him? What’s the etiquette here?
It’ll be interesting to see which direction Rowe and O’Brien take the Turtles in. Rogen and Goldberg have been producing some fantastic comic book adaptations for Amazon (including The Boys), but the team they’ve assembled here would suggest something with more of a focus on comedic versions of the Turtles. Either way, Film Stories is excited to see what they come up with.
We don’t have a date for this big screen Ninja Turtles return just yet, although we do know that it’ll be released by Paramount. We’ll let you know when there are more details. In the meantime, help yourself to a slice of pizza.
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