As we all know and adore, a new mostly live-action, semi-computer-animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is on the way (Read: Brand New ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Movie Goes Green!). Now this movie has made it’s first official move, hiring John Fusco to pen the movie.
Fusco seems to be a pretty decent-fitting choice for the job with both action and martial arts-heavy films under his belt. He’s written movies like both Young Guns movies, Hidalgo with Viggo Mortensen, and the recent Jackie Chan and Jet Li flick, The Forbidden Kingdom. He’s also the man that was tapped for the impossible task of writing a Seven Samurai remake — though that one isn’t an official go yet.
The movie is expected to use a method similar to that of the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are (both movies produced by Scott Mednick), where physical costumes and makeup are used for the creatures/turtles, with CGI animations added to certain parts of the film — specifically, to the faces of the turtles, which will help with realistic features and reactions. This new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles project will use the original comics created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman as source material for this expected origins story. While this is great news, it does not mean the movie will be that darker version of the Turtles we’ve all been dying to see. We can always hope, though!
The Dark Knight route with the Ninja Turtles? I can’t think of anything better.
[Source: Variety]
That first volume of the original TMNT is pretty stinking dark and violent from what I recall. There’s only occasional humor, though more tongue-in-cheek. If they want to match something like that, it would have to be an R, but they want people in the seats, so it could end up a PG-13.
I hope they don’t stray too far from the look and feel of the original movie. I know it might not have been like the comic, but the new stuff just doesn’t do it for me.