The Mirage Group, who owned the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and brought us the all CGI TMNT, has sold the entire global property rights to children’s brand Nickelodeon for $60 Million. The deal includes the movies and shows, as well as the rights to all merchandising.
It’s been in a news a few times recently, but in case you haven’t heard, a brand new Ninja Turtle movie is on the way. The movie is to retract from that CGI style that they tried and move back into the glorious world of live-action. To ensure an even greater realistic quality, it is expected that they will use the same methods used in Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are in which people are put into highly-detailed costumes and only the facial expressions are created using computer effects. Hopefully, the end result will be similar to the Ninja Turtles we saw in the ’80s and ’90s, but with a whole lot more realism to them.
One of the main concerns with this new project was whether they would aim the movie at a younger audience as they always have before, or if they would finally make a darker, more adult aimed movie for the original fans of the Turtles who are all now in their 20s and 30s. If today’s news is any indication, it will be the former yet again.
Considering it is Nickelodeon who made the purchase, one would have to think that this means that they will be planning to keep anything Ninja Turtle related to an “all-audiences” standard. Nick also has plans to produce a new CG-animated TV series for the Turtles, and both it and the movie are planned for release in 2012. It’s worth note that Nick’s sister studio, Paramount Pictures, will be the ones producing the new movie, so it will be interesting to see how they plan to handle the two and how similar or different they might be.
Where the Wild Things Are has also managed to make a darker movie with a PG rating, so hopefully that sets up a template for others wanting to pull it off. It will surely help that Wild Things producer Scott Mednick will also act as a producer on the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.
[Source: Variety]
What going on with all the self offs,disney buys marvel; now this? Whats next nabisco gonna by dc?
Its all about the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Nickelodeon, I have never asked much of you but please…please, please, please…don’t do the Nickelodeon thing on this movie.
@Joseph Sorry, the new take on Krang the talking brain will sound and act exactly like spongebob squarepants.
Someone please photoshop that…
The ORIGINAL TMNT was for adults. The original fans are now in their late 30s and 40s. Before the cartoon was the original and beautiful comic book series. The language and themes were definitely aimed at adults (4 letter words and teenage sexual frustration) the fans in their 20s probably don’t even know that these books exist.
It’s better than Saban doing another series! TMNT is in better hands!
@alex
The Ninja Turtles originated in 1984, not 1967. Everyone knows they were a violent adult aimed comic book first, which is what we’re referring to when we say “dark” in this story.
Easy, sunshine.
I actually think this can be a good move if Paramount takes it seriously. The next TMNT live action movie can absolutely NOT be made for a target audience of 5-7yr olds, it must be made for an older audience while not excluding the 10-14yr kids.
My team and I have been developing a vision for a live action TMNT movie since summer of 2005, we completed our vision last fall and have been developing our marketing materials ever since. Now that the power has shifted, we can only pray Paramount will hear what we have to say. Check out our Ninja Turtles movie project at
http://www.turtlesthemovie.com
We would love to hear all of you Ninja Turtles fans out there!
Don’t forget that Nickelodeon made the supremely excellent series Avatar: The Last Airbender. If they give whatever creative team they put behind their iteration of TMNT the same freedom they allowed Avatar, I have no doubt it will be great.