Nickelodeon Buys Ninja Turtles for Film, Series

Published by Jeff Leins on October 22, 2009

The kid-friendly cable channel Nickelodeon picked up the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for about $60 million and is planning to revive the TMNT with a new movie and TV series.

The Mirage Group, who owns the property, has been shopping the idea around for over a year now with 4Kids Entertainment and announced a live-action movie on the way during its 25th Anniversary “shell-abration” around April (the month, not the news reporter).  It seems Nickelodeon was interested in not only the film rights, but the whole package that includes a new computer-animated series for 2012, according to Variety.

Paramount Pictures, another company under the Viacom umbrella with Nickelodeon, will release the live-action reboot the same year. In previous discussions, executive producer and Turtles co-creator Peter Laird hinted at the use of “face replacement technology” seen on the Where the Wild Things Are creatures.  This is further evidenced by Wild Things‘ Scott Mednick’s involvement as a producer.

Laird also promised to stay true to the original black and white comic books that premiered in 1984, which initially meant a more violent samurai direction for the mutant foursome.

However, Nickelodeon buying the rights means there’s very little hope for a slightly darker, grittier take on the characters or the Batman Begins style reboot they compared this to early on.  It will likely be another corny retread of the cowabunga dudes eating pizza and fighting the inept Foot Clan from their sewer home base.  Go ninja go?