SweetPaul Entertainment

It turns out that Kevin Eastman’s post that I wrote about just before turned out to be a lot of hot air. All told, had I continued reading, I might have found out, but that was a story I’d had in my RSS reader and really wanted to comment on.

I’m really happy with what I’ve found, though, as it seems I was on the right track with my own ideas for the film. As I said in the last post, the CGI film captured the Turtles like never before, and it would have been a shame to lose that ability by moving back to the costumed variety. But, according to an interview with the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator, Peter Laird, there is a live-action and CGI Hybrid idea on the table that I think has great potential, as long as the turtles are designed well enough to fit in the real world.

As it stands now, there is no intention of doing another live-action film like the first three, with actors and stuntmen in actual Turtle suits, contrary to what was said by Kevin. We have pretty much decided that the next “TMNT” movie should be what we’ve been calling a “hybrid” – that is to say, live-action humans and sets combined with very realistic CGI Turtles (and possibly some other CGI characters).

Now, when it comes to the storyline for the film, it appears that they have yet to decide where to take the story. This is another good thing, as a re-imagining is something that I think would be regrettable. That being said, they’ve yet to decide, so it still might happen.

The storyline for this new “hybrid” movie has not been settled on yet. We’re still batting some different ideas around. The sky’s the limit. My preference would be a story which fits into TMNT movie continuity in some way. But nothing has been decided.

Something else that he brought up, which I had not considered, until I learned about the hybrid style of the film, are the characters of Casey and April, portrayed by Elias Koteas and Judith Hoag in the first live-action film. Laird believes they might be too old to return to those roles, even if they wanted to.

However, I think Chris Evans and Sarah Michelle Gellar did wonderful work voicing the Casey and April characters in the recent CGI “TMNT” movie, and I think it would be really cool if we could get them to reprise those roles, but this time “in the flesh.” I think that might be the first time something like that has happened.

Laird goes on to say that he is 95% happy with the CGI TMNT film. There are things he would have changed, and things he would have put into it, but other than a few minor details, it might just be what has convinced him to look into the hybrid idea if he had not been thinking about that before:

As much as I loved what Jim Henson and his crew accomplished with those rubber suits in the first “TMNT” live-action movie, I believe that CGI – especially now that it has reached the incredible level it has these days – is the way to go to realize fantastic creatures like the Turtles. The expressions the animators were able to get on the Turtles in this last movie were simply amazing.

This just gets better and better!

In 1993, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III was released, closing out the trilogy of Ninja Turtles films with a film that is decidedly sub-par. Especially when you compare it to the first two in the trilogy, the third just doesn’t measure up. 2007 brought us redemption in the form of TMNT, a CGI-driven Ninja Turtles film that captured the feel of the first two films in the series, while giving the Turtles more emotion and fighting style than they ever had before. It was exhilarating to finally see the Turtles as we’ve always imagined them to be. Not only that, but they had a lot of depth as well. In that world, they lived and breathed. I wasn’t too keen on the so-called ‘progression’ of April O’Niel and Casey Jones’ relationship, but I was still thrilled by the film, and was looking forward to a sequel.

Now it looks like that particular sequel will never happen. This effectively puts TMNT as the close of the original movies (as you might understand when you see the end of it). Kevin Eastman, one of the creators of the Ninja Turtles, has commented about the future of the franchise. And the future, it seems, is going back to the past.

“Although the CGI film did well enough to warrant 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. Back to basics, back to the origin and the intro of the Shredder, etc…there have been talks, trips to Northampton to talk to Mr Laird, and discussions with the original “first” TMNT film director Steve Barron to come back and do it right–but no official
word yet…will keep you posted.”

So, essentially, the TMNT film did make enough to warrant a sequel, but the excellence of that film wasn’t enough for Warner Brothers and Imagi. Go figure, though. Warner’s had so much success since re-imagining Batman with both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, they are going to play up the origin stories. That’s alright, I suppose, but not really what I wanted to see.

But there is still hope. They’ve approached the director of the first TMNT film, Steve Barron, to offer him the chance to “do it right.” Whatever that means. I was very pleased with his first Turtles film, and still watch it often to this day. To have him back in the driver’s seat would ensure the film has the same feel as the original, while taking the Turtles into this century.

Either way, I’m looking forward to more new Turtles adventures. This is going to be fun!

-via Cinemablend