Live Action TMNT Reboot?

Published by Jeff Leins on: September 4th, 2008

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman said there might be a live-action origin story/reboot movie in the works for the fighting fivesome.

The original forum posting is long gone, but I grabbed his statement from IESB.  I bet you’ll never guess what they’re patterning the re-imaging after.

Yes, it is true. Although the CGI film did well enough to warrent [sic] a sequel, there has been much talk between Imagi and Warners to do a better ‘re-invention’ of the TMNT’s, in a live action film, like what was done with Batman.

Batman.  Of course.  Because every single movie after 2005 will now reference Batman Begins/Dark Knight as an excuse for rebooting their dead franchises for another shot at big money.  There’s going to be a darker, more realistic version of turtles who mutate into fighting ninja teenagers?  When will studios (including WB) understand Batman was successful because of the genius of Christopher Nolan, not because some executive remade a goofy series with a new tone.

The cowabungas, dudes, and excessive pizza eating will be ditched for a martial arts movie based in the real world?  Their mentor is a giant rat…  Shredder only wears a suit of armor everywhere he goes…  The bad guys are called “The Foot Clan.”  None of this belongs in a reality-based world.  Maybe they’ll introduce Krang.

The CGI version was moderately successful ($54 million), but are the TMNT still relevant?  We’ll have to find the scepter from TMNT III: Turtles in Time to travel to when people still cared.  The movies and toys peaked over a decade ago.

Who knows, maybe I’m unaware of a new generation of pizza tossers and plastic nunchucks.  Let me put it another way.  Vanilla Ice performed during one of their movies.  Go ninja, go ninja, go… away.