Michael Bay and Jonathan Liebesman’s reboot of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ has had a good bit of controversy since it was announced. It seems like every step of the process from casting Megan Fox to changing the name and characters to just ‘Ninja Turtles’ and then changing it all back again resulted in an uproar from the fan base. But now things seemed to have quieted down a bit, and fans now have the opportunity to put the thought of this movie out of their heads for a little while longer.
According to Deadline, Paramount Pictures has pushed the release date of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from June 6, 2014 to August 8, 2014. While this may indicate problems with the production (which wouldn’t be a surprise to many due to the problems in the past), that isn’t actually the case. The studio was set to release new films for two huge franchises in June, this new ‘TMNT’ and ‘Transformers’. Now, rather than have the new installment of Bay’s robots in disguise series around the same time as the heroes in a half shell, Paramount has opted to spread them out since both involve huge advertising campaigns and a big merchandising component. They wouldn’t want too much overlap since one might drown out the other.
However, Paramount is making a risky decision by moving the turtles to later in the summer. Marvel Studios is set to release ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ on August 1, 2014. Even though Star-Lord’s team will be going into their second week, those films always seem to have a good long run of success at the box office and drown out the competition. Just look at ‘Men In Black III’, which wasn’t a bad movie, but was forsaken to obscurity to the general public because it was released around the same time as ‘The Avengers’.
While I’m very much in favor of the separation of ‘Transformers 4’ and ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’, I think that Paramount could’ve picked a better date. But then again, high risk yields high rewards. We’ll just have to see which crime fighting team comes out on top next summer.
‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ starring Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Danny Woodburn, Alan Ritchson, Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard, Noel Fisher, and Will Fichtner hits theaters on August 8, 2014.
