Michael Bay to Co-Produce New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live-Action Movie
Posted 06.01.10 by BrentJS
Back in October, Viacom's Nickelodean snatched up worldwide intellectual property rights and merchandising rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for $60 million. Now, according to Deadline, Nickelodean and Paramount have teamed up to reboot the franchise by bringing a new live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to the big screen and they've enlisted Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, to produce it with Galen Walker and Scott Mednick.
Originally published in 1984 by creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) comic book was a black-and-white, self-published parody of popular comic books of the time like Marvel's X-Men and Daredevil — the ninjas in Daredevil are called "the Hand," while in TMNT they are called "the Foot."
The story revolves around four turtles — Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello — who were transformed by a toxic "mutagen" into human-sized, pizza-eating teenagers. They were trained in the ways of ninjutsu by their mentor and father-figure, the anthropomorphic rat-sensei Master Splinter, to fight against the evil Shredder and his Foot Clan of ninjas.
At a time when comic book creators were lucky to sell a few hundred copies of their creator-owned titles, TMNT sold out its first printing of 3,000 copies and ended up going back to print multiple times. The series lasted for over 100 issues, spawning multiple spin-off comics, a popular cartoon series, countless toys, multiple video games, three live-action movies, and, most recently, the CG-animated movie TMNT (2007). Mirage still retains the right to publish up to 18 issues of TMNT-related comic books per year under the deal with Nickelodean.
According to Deadline, the producers will begin the search for writers for the new movie within "the next few weeks."