You can’t keep a good turtle down, and Hollywood can never leave well enough alone when there’s a chance a dollar can be made. To that end, Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ says that Paramount is working on another big screen, live-action reboot of the famous terrapins. This follows the most recent reboots, the 2014 ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ and the 2016 sequel ‘Out of the Shadows’.
When he was recently asked by ComicBook.com about the franchise’s future, Eastman revealed:
“Stay tuned. It is a work in progress cause, you know, the experiences and so the fans reactions plus and minus to the 2014, 2016 movie, uh, Paramount I believe had taken those to heart and where they’d like to see the next reiteration go to so I think its going to be a next-level type of stuff which I’m excited to see.”
Andrew Dodge (‘Bad Words’, ‘Space Jam 2’) and Lindsey Beer (‘Sierra Burges is a Loser’) are reported to be working in the script. In January, it was reported that Paramount hoped to begin filming the reboot sometime this year.
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The 2014 ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ was a solid hit, earning $191 million in the US and $493M worldwide, on a budget of $125M. Unfortunately, interest died after that. ‘Out of the Shadows’ was a dismal flop, earning just $245M worldwide on a budget of $135M.
This was despite the sequel being better than the first, and out of ALL of the ‘TMNT’ movies, it was the closest to the comic book/cartoon source material, introducing Casey Jones (Stephen Amell), and the likes of Bebop, Rocksteady, Baxter Stockman, and Krang, who had never been featured in movies before.
But the first movie was so bad that viewers didn’t feel compelled to turn out for the follow-up. Another factor was that the property had limited nostalgic appeal and that was satisfied by the first movie. (And while the general consensus is that ‘Out of the Shadows’ was better than the 2014 movie, it still wasn’t great.)
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But according to Eastman, Paramount is taking fan reaction to those two movies “to heart” when crafting this new reboot. There’s no telling what he means by “next-level.”
One thing Paramount may want to be wary of is that movie audiences are already warry of reboots and seem especially put off by those that come too soon after the last failed attempt. Just look at this year’s ‘Hellboy‘, which seems to have arrived too soon after 2008’s ‘Hellboy: The Golden Army’, and that was after 11 years. ‘Into the Dark’ came out just three years ago. Marvel Studios is being cautious with the ‘X-Men’ which they recently claimed the rights to. Currently, Marvel states that it will be at least five years before fans even find out what they have planned for the ‘X-Men’, with some rumors indicating that it will be closer to ten years before Marvel releases a new ‘X-Men’ flick.
What do you think? Are ready for a new take on the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ on the big screen? Or does this franchise need to go back into the shadows for a decade or so?
