New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie Planned from Paramount

Paramount is going back to the well (or sewer, if you will) for a new take on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they have hired Andrew Dodge, writer of the Jason Bateman comedy Bad Words, to handle the script. Dodge is also working the script for upcoming comedy Space Jam 2, starring LeBron James, and O’Lucky Day, which stars Peter Dinklage as a leprechaun (yes, this is really happening).

The new TMNT film will be produced by Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller via their company, Platinum Dunes. They were behind recent hit A Quiet Place, along with the 2014 blockbuster Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film and 2016’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. The former brought in a respectable $493 million at the worldwide box office, while the latter belly-flopped with only $245 million. Due to the steep box office decline, insiders are speculating that this new film will be a reboot of the franchise, rather than a sequel to Out of the Shadows.

The Turtles have a checkered history, first appearing in comic books in 1984. The story follows a mutant sewer rat named Splinter who trains four pizza-loving mutated turtles (famously named Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello) in the art of ninjutsu in order to fight crime. An animated series, along with a line of action figures from Playmate, brought the series into the mainstream spotlight a few years later, taking a more light-hearted and humorous approach to the darker comic book material. The first film hit theaters to much fanfare in 1990, and two sequels quickly followed. Since then, multiple animated series, an animated movie, and the two recent films have kept the franchise in the public consciousness. A new TV show, called Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, will air on Nickelodeon later this year.

There is currently no news on a possible release date for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, but once more information is available we’ll be on it faster than a mutant turtle on a fresh cheese pizza.