Seth Rogen Provides Update On Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Film

John F. Trent |

Aug 24, 2020

The Boys Executive producer and the star of the HBO Max film American Pickle Seth Rogen recently provided an update on his upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.

Back in June, Nickelodeon announced that Rogen alongside Evan Goldberg and James Weaver under their Point Grey production company were behind the project.

They also announced the film would be directed by Jeff Rowe of Gravity Falls with a script written by Brendan O’Brien.

VicaomCBS President of Kids & Family Brian Robbins confirmed the film would be CG-animated theatrical release.

Robbins released a statement, “Adding Seth, Evan and James’ genius to the humor and action that’s already an integral part of TMNT is going to make this a next-level reinvention of the property. I’m looking forward to see what they do, and I know that Ramsey Naito and her team are excited to take the Nick Animation Studio into another great direction with their first-ever CG-animated theatrical.”

At the time of that original announcement, no details on the cast or the plot of the film were even hinted at.

However, Rogen did provide an update on the film while promoting his American Pickle film. Speaking with Collider, he detailed the film would really focus on the teenage aspect of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Rogen explained, “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.”

He added, “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.”

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were originally created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird and appeared in a one-shot comic book simply titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and published by Mirage Studios in 1984.

The one-shot, which might be one of the best comic stories out there, would be a huge success and the two creators would go on to tell more stories about the Turtles.

Eventually, Eastman and Laird would meet with Playmates Toys and the idea of an animated cartoon series was hatched. The show would eventually get picked up by CBS and run 10 seasons until it wrapped up in 1996.

Along with the animated series, the Turtles would get their first live action adaptation in 1990 titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The film would earn $202 million at the global box office with $135 million from the domestic box office. It reportedly had a $13.5 million production budget.

It would spawn two sequels. The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze in 1991 would earn $78.6 million. It had a $25 million production budget.

The third film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, would earn $42.2 million on a $21 million production budget.

The Turtles film franchise would cool off until 2007 when a computer-animated film directed by Kevin Munroe would debut. It would earn $96 million at the global box office on a $35 million budget.

In 2014, Michael Bay would produce a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film directed by Jonathan Liebesman. The film grossed $485 million worldwide on a $125 million production budget.

It would spawn a sequel in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows in 2016. That film grossed $245.3 million worldwide on a $135 million production budget.

A third film in that franchise is supposedly in the works. In January 2019, producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form said they were working on the project and had hoped to find a director and begin to go into production by the end of the year.

‘A Quiet Place’ producers are rebooting the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’ again! Production could start as early as this year #CriticsChoiceAwards https://t.co/wdsQUeuspo pic.twitter.com/IxbalX6Gxm

— Variety (@Variety) January 13, 2019

That didn’t happen and it’s unclear if that project is still in the works given the merger between Viacom and CBS.

What do you make of Rogen’s update on his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film? Are you interested in seeing a focus on the teenage aspect of the Turtles?