The most interesting part of the deal is who makes up the partners in Platinum Dunes: Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and Michael Bay.  Yes, the same Michael Bay who is busy working on Transformers 3.  Apparently there is a meeting set in the next few weeks with writers for the project.

I can see how Michael Bay and Transformers was a good fit, but Michael Bay and TMNT?  That’s a mystery that remains to be seen.  He’s not the likely candidate to direct the film, but there isn’t a director list put together yet, at least in the public.

What would TMNT look like with Michael Bay at the helm?  What concerns me is what would become of the character of April O’Neil.

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I had heard a rumor from World Events Productions that they were working on a new Voltron cartoon that would be in the style of the original.  I’m not sure if that idea is still how it is being done, as no screenshots or artwork of any kind has been released just yet, but maybe soon we’ll know more.

Here’s the only public information so far, from the press release:

Voltron Panthera Force will premiere on Nicktoons this season.  The series follows the exploits of a group of five young cadets brought together under trying circumstances to form a newly appointed Voltron Lion Squad dubbed the “Panthera Force.”  Voltron Panthera Force is a World Events Productions in conjunction with Kick Start Production.

I hope that a trailer comes out soon for the show.  I’m also excited to hear the original theme again.

The other series joining the Nicktoons network line-up is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  This one, however, won’t be a new iteration.  At least not until 2012, when a new CG-based series will be released.  Until that time they will air existing episodes of the earlier series.  It is not known if it’ll be the 1987 series or the 2003 series, but it is more likely to be the latter.

Here’s the information given in the press release:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, debuting this season on Nicktoons, is based on four mutant turtles–trained in the art of Ninjitsu–who battle evil from the New York sewers.  The animated series was recently acquired by Nickelodeon and is jointly produced by 4Kids Entertainment and Mirage Studios.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is considered one of the most popular kids’ television programs and was created in 1984 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird as a successful comic book series.

It’s too bad they aren’t launching the new Turtles series for another couple of years, but such is life.

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There is no word of a DVD release yet, but the studio is working on it.  It was created as a direct-to-DVD feature film, but since the rights to the TMNT have been sold to Nickelodeon, there are issues that need to be tied up.

I don’t want to spoil all of the fun for anyone that grew up watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons, but let’s just say, there are cameos galore.  Keep your eyes peeled for many of the characters from the older cartoons to appear in different scenes, sometimes in the foreground or background for a few seconds.

The writing is very good, as is the directing.  Just when you thought it couldn’t get any cooler, they bring in some very unexpected characters, and the whole thing gets more exciting.  I know that is very vague, but I suspect that, if you’re a Turtles fan, the prospect of the team up has already caught your interest.  If you’re not, nothing I say will convince you otherwise.

The one downside is the voices of the ’88 Turtles.  They didn’t get the original cast members back, and I wish that I knew why.  If you know, please comment.  The voices are pretty close, though, overall… though Leonardo’s is very drastically different.

I can’t wait to own this on Blu-ray (if possible).  If not, then DVD will suffice.

Watch it on 4Kids TV while it’s available: Turtles Forever

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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are making their way back to the bigscreen.

The Mirage Group, which owns the property, is moving forward with a live-action film focusing on the origins of the iconic crime fighters. Project, targeted for release in 2011, would mark the fifth bigscreen outing for the sewer-dwelling heroes Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael as well as their master Splinter.

News coincides with the Turtles’ 25th anniversary celebration, which kicks off Thursday in New York as the first “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” film unspools at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Legendary Pictures former chief marketing officer Scott Mednick is producing the new pic alongside Galen Walker, who produced the 2007 computer-animated “TMNT” pic, the most recent installment in the franchise. Peter Laird, Gary Richardson, Frederick Fierst, Eric Crown and Napoleon Smith III are exec producing the film, which is based on the characters created by Laird and Kevin Eastman.

The characters first appeared in a May 1984 comicbook before spawning a lucrative line of toys, cartoons and three films released in the early 1990s. In 2003, the Turtles were reintroduced to a new generation via a TV series, the “TMNT” film and a revamped merchandising program.

The latest project is being financed by Lightbox Prods.

“The original dozen comics created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman are some of the best source material one could hope for,” said Mednick, whose exec producing credits include the upcoming “Where the Wild Things Are.” Laird, who bought out Eastman’s share of the property several years ago, said the film will remain true to the spirit of the original comicbooks. He added that the pic may employ face replacement technology, which would allow the turtles to be much more expressive.

Today’s 25th anniversary “Shell-ebration” will also include lighting the Empire State Building in “turtle green.”

Got all that? Okay, let’s focus on the important parts of it.

First, let’s get this out of the way: they’re hoping to use the original twelve comics as source material From what I understand, having never read those, they have pretty well covered that spirit in the most recent film, TMNT. It was pretty dark, thematically, and I don’t see them getting much darker than that.

Here’s where the CG comes in: the film may employ face replacement technology. That’s a very interesting thing to suggest… I’m not as keen on that as I would have been to see hyper-realistic CG turtles roaming around in the world, like Transformers. To make the turtles more expressive? Yeah, it will make them more expressive than they were in the first three films, but only as expressive as in TMNT.

In the first paragraph, they mention that they want to go back and tell the origin story of the Ninja Turtles again. The story that’s been told in the comics, the cartoons, and the movies. The only questions are: how in depth are they planning on telling the story and what version of the story are they going to do?

You see, Splinter has two origins. In the 1987 animated series, he was a human to start with. In the movies he was always a rat.

I’m also curious to see Splinter train the turtles for the first time, as well as how they all learn English. Not that it really matters much.

Does this mean that Shredder will return? Will he return, then, as leader of the foot clan? In the first three films, they kind of wrote themselves into a corner. They had Shredder done right in the first film, while the second film turned him into Super Shredder. The third film departs from Shredder as villain, even though the Turtles wind up in feudal Japan, by time-travelling. Had they taken their time with the story, they could have had an ancestor of the Shredder as the primary villain. That would have added a layer to the history of the battle between foes. It would also have made sense as to why Shredder recognized the turtles as a valid threat, if he had a family legend that was passed down to him.

It would have made a much more interconnected saga.

The fourth film features a new leader for the foot clan, as well as the Shredder’s helmets from the first two films. At the end of the film, it even references the Shredder’s rumored re-appearance. This left the series wide open for another film, like TMNT: Revenge of the Shredder or something like that.

Now, we’ll never know where that story was headed, and can only dream of what might have been. The new turtles film might have nothing to do with that. I’m looking forward to it, but only as far as the potential that the movie has. And out of curiosity. It should prove an interesting movie. We have some time though, it’s still a couple of years off.

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I’d rather have a table of characters like the one in Smash Brothers, but I suppose this will do. Take a look at the trailer after the break, as well as screenshots.

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There are also former members of Team Ninja working on the game as well. They worked on the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series.

Of course, this is overly optimistic, but I’m really intrigued by the promise of it. I really enjoyed the TMNT game that is currently available, regardless of the repetitive fighting. I felt that it actually captured the Turtles and their abilities very well. I also found it to be a very similar game to the old NES sequels, though in 3-D.

The game will feature many modes of play, including Story, Battle Royale, Tournament, and Winner/Loser Stays On. There will also be unlockable characters and stages, much like Smash Brothers. Fighting arenas will be interactive and each character will be highlighted with a glowing effect for ease of use.

Tentatively titled TMNT: Smash Up, the game will likely be released in September.

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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!

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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

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