New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie In The Works

Paramount isn’t giving up on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, but it is unclear if the newest incarnation is a reboot or a sequel.

The studio has announced that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie has brought on Andrew Dodge, who wrote the Jason Bateman starring Bad Words. As of right now, the film does have Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller attached to produce it through their Platinum Dunes banner (A Quiet Place) (via THR).

From the report, it seems the name of the film will actually be simply Ninja Turtles, but no official announcement about the title or the plot has been made. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise was last seen on screen in 2016’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, the sequel to the 2014 reboot. The first reboot was quite successful, garnering a domestic take of $191 million and a worldwide total of $493 million, but the sequel failed to live up those numbers, taking in only $82 million domestically and $245 million worldwide.

It’s also important to note that those projects were in the pipeline before the studio’s new chairman Jim Gianopulos arrived. It seems there’s a focus on getting the studio’s franchises back on track, so it seems unlikely that the studio would just continue what the last film did for a third go round. Odds are we can expect a redesign of the character’s looks as well as a new take on the mythos when the Turtles hit the big screen once more.

The franchise has experienced plenty of success before of course, as the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990 brought in just over $135 million with a worldwide total of 202 million. That film would receive two more sequels which released in 1991 and 1993 respectively. The franchise hit the big screen once again with an animated film titled TMNT in 2007, which brought in around $95 million worldwide.

It will be interesting to see where Paramount takes the franchise next. Are fans ready for another reboot, or will they keep the previous lore intact and just build something different from it, perhaps using a time jump? Who knows, but the critics weren’t always kind to the last two films, so a fresh slate might be just what the franchise needs.