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‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Movie Reboot in the Works

Paramount is planning a reboot of it’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film franchise, according to a Variety interview.  The new film will take place outside the Michael Bay produced films, and will serve as the third reboot of the film series.  The reboot film will be developed by A Quiet Place producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller, both of whom worked with Michael Bay on his iteration of the characters.  It had been reported in June of 2018 that Bay would return as producer, with the script to be written by Andrew Dodge, but neither have been confirmed as of this writing.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been through plenty of reboots, on TV, in comics, and in the movies, so this news is not exactly surprising.  Beginning with Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s underground Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1984, the Ninja Turtles went commercial with a wildly popular cartoon in the 1990’s, along with a toy line.  The Turtles also started appearing in films in 1990, with the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which spawned two sequels–Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time.  By that time, foam costume turtles voiced by the likes of Corey Feldman were passe, and the first reboot brought the short-lived, animated, TMNT.  While it was successful, it was still a stretch from where the Turtles started out, as gritty, violent crime fighting mutants.

Enter Michael Bay.  The much-maligned director of the live action Transformers series (also from Paramount) had a vision of bringing the darker iteration of the Turtles back to the forefront.  Unfortunately, his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the follow-up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, while profitable, were not well received, and there has been no Ninja Turtles (Teenage and Mutant or otherwise) on the big screen for nearly 3 years now.

This new film, according to Fuller, is going to take a different approach than the previous outings.

The thing about the Turtles is, like A Quiet Place, it’s about a family.  They’re both family stories about a family sticking together.

-Brad Fuller

The film could go into production at the end of 2019, and no director is currently attached.