Rumor: Live-Action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Series In Development
A new rumor details that CBS All Access is developing a live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.
The rumor comes from Emre Kaya at The Cinema Spot and details the series will adapt the five-issue IDW series The Last Ronin that is set to be released later this year.
The Last Ronin is based off a “lost” 1987 storyline from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
The series is set in a future New York City where there is only one surviving Turtle who is on a “seemingly hopeless mission to obtain justice for his fallen family and friends.”
Eastman described the project in a press release from IDW, “About ten years ago, I re-discovered a twenty page outline for a TMNT story that Peter and I wrote together back in 1987. The story was set thirty years in the future, which (as written then) was set in 2017.”
He added, “Reading through it again, I drifted back to a very different time in TMNT history — back when it was all about the comics, mostly just Peter and I writing and drawing the issues, pre-everything the world would soon come to know about these characters that we’d created and called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”
Eastman continued, “A little over a year ago, as the ongoing series headed towards issue one hundred, I showed a rough revised and updated version of the story outline (now set in the year 2040) to Tom Waltz, who equally fell in love with the possibilities of it.”
“The Last Ronin is a heartfelt love poem to all the TMNT universes of the past, and offers up an intense look at one possible future — firmly based on and adapted from an original thirty-three year-old idea, from the original creators,” Eastman stated.
Here’s the official description for the first issue:
“It’s the TMNT event of 2020! Springing from the minds of TMNT co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird comes an epic like you’ve never seen before! In a future NYC far different than the one we know today, a lone surviving Turtle goes on a seemingly hopeless mission to obtain justice for his fallen family and friends. Kinetic layouts from Eastman, moody inks from Andy Kuhn and a thrilling script full of surprises from longtime TMNT scribe Tom Waltz all combine to make this one of the most memorable TMNT stories you will ever read!
Oversized in both format and page count, this is a perennial TMNT tale that can’t be missed!”
The Cinema Spot claims that “the series is set to be the result of a massive collaboration between CBS, Paramount, Nickelodeon and other ViacomCBS-owned companies.”
The last we really heard about a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action project was back in January 2019 when A Quiet Place producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form confirmed to Variety on the red carpet at the Critics Choice Awards they were looking at rebooting the Turtles.
‘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
When asked what they had in the works they answered, “Jack Ryan Season 2 just wrapped, the sequel of A Quiet Place, and we are doing a reboot of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Paramount.”
When pressed for more details Form stated, “It’s looking like production by the end of the year.” He later added, “We don’t have a director yet. We have dates we’re trying to hit that’s all.”
It’s unclear if that project is still in the works.
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