New "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" Film to Embrace Teenage-Perspective

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While the 1990 live-action feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles remains endearing to fans of the heroes on a half shell, since then the characters haven't been able to catch a break on-screen. The two sequels (Remembered for toning down the violence to lure in a younger audience) were not well-received. After that, a 2007 CG film came out and got solid reception and was a mild box office success (Making $95.6 million on a $34 million budget) but not enough to make a sequel. That led to the pair of crassly humored, live-action/CG hybrid films that were produced by Michael Bay. Not only did fans have an issue with the way the characters were interpreted (Visually and characteristically), but the second one was too much of a disappointment at the box office to justify a third film. Now, Nickelodeon (Who has funded the series on the big screen since the 2007 film) and Point Grey Pictures are set to take another crack at it.

While the film is being directed by Jeff Rowe with a script from Brendan O’Brien (Bad Neighbors), the project is being overseen by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, notable for serving as executive producers on the shows The Boys and Preacher. Now, in an interview with Collider as he promotes his new HBO Max film An American Pickle, Rogen spoke on how they are trying to separate themselves from the past films, particularly by exploring the "Teenage" part in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

“As a lifelong fan of Ninja Turtles, weirdly the ‘Teenage’ part of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was always the part that stuck out to me the most. And as someone who loves teenage movies, and who’s made a lot of teenage movies, and who literally got their start in their entire profession by writing a teenage movie, the idea of kind of honing in on that element was really exciting to us. I mean, not disregarding the rest, but really using that as kind of a jumping off point for the film.”

While it's a wonder if Rogen's style of humor will work with these characters is anyone's guess. But between the pandemic and when theaters will even open back up (Paramount Pictures is set to distribute the film), we won't be finding out for awhile. Stay tuned!