Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Co-Creator Kevin Eastman Says Paramount Has Plans for a New Movie

It didn’t take long for the recent reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films to run out of steam. After a fairly successful debut in 2014, the Michael Bay-produced franchise trailed off significantly in its second outing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. It was clear after the critical lashing and lack of box office success that this series was already over, but that doesn’t mean that the Turtles are finished on the big screen. In fact, it seems as though there are already conversations being had about how to move the story in a new direction.

Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman spoke with ComicBook.com recently about the future of the entire TMNT property, and he teased that there is something special potentially in the works regarding the big screen adaptations.

“Stay tuned,” Eastman teased. “It is a work in progress cause, you know, the experiences and so the fans reactions plus and minus to the 2014, 2016 movie, uh, Paramount I believe had taken those to heart and where they’d like to see the next reiteration go to so I think its going to be a next level type of stuff which I’m excited to see.”

This could mean multiple things. Eastman could be talking about a continuation of the 2014 and 2016 TMNT films, just with a different creative direction. More likely, the Turtles will be getting a brand new start the next time they venture into theaters.

When the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were initially rebooted in 2014, their first film opened to $65 million domestically in its first weekend, on the way to a $191 million haul in North America and $493 million worldwide. With a budget of $125 million that’s not a horrible performance. However, the sequel suffered tremendously. Even with a bigger budget, 2016’s Out of the Shadows managed just $245 million globally, right around half the total of its predecessor.

Changes clearly needed to be made if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wanted to find on the big screen in the future, and it looks as though Eastman and Paramount are looking to do just that.