Here's why every canceled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie never happened. The titular martial arts-practicing reptiles debuted on the pages of their own comic book back in 1984, but it wasn't until the 1987 debut of their cartoon series that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became a true cultural phenomenon. The pizza-loving quartet of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael have proven to have more staying power than many other 1980s inventions, successfully managing to produce new TV shows, movies, and video games all the way until the current decade.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first graced the silver screen in 1990, starring in a live-action adventure that became an absolute smash hit, raking in over $200 million on a budget of $13.5 million. Two live-action sequels followed in 1991 and 1993, which each did worse than the last, but it didn't come close to killing the franchise. More recently, Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes produced two more live-action movies in 2014 and 2016, with three animated movies also being released since 2007, and two more in the works.
While all of the above projects did indeed get made since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' 1980s heyday, there have also been no less than five planned movies that ended up either stuck in development hell, or canceled outright. Three of these unmade TMNT movies were live-action projects, while two were animated. Here's a look at all of them, and why they didn't happen.
Teenage Mutant Turtles 4 (1990s, Live-Action)
Between 1995 and 1997, two concepts were floating around for a possible Teenage Mutant Turtles 4, a sequel to 1993's time-traveling Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Little is known about the first, titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: The Next Mutation, which was an idea by creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. As one might expect, it would have involved the turtles and their rat mentor Splinter undergoing further mutations. The second concept was titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: The Foot Walks Again.
A bit more is known about The Foot Walks Again, which obviously would have featured the return of the villainous Foot Clan. This version of TMNT 4 would have added a fifth turtle named Kirby, in a tribute to legendary superhero creator Jack Kirby. It also would have featured the return of Super Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze, as well as the return of the turtles' antihero buddy Casey Jones. Reporter April O'Neill would have also turned evil at some point in the film. As for exactly why a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4 didn't happen, the general opinion seems to be that the underwhelming box office take and awful reviews of the third film led New Line Cinema to be hesitant toward continuing.
Teenage Mutant Turtles (2011, Live-Action)
Between the 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film trilogy, and the 2014 reboot franchise produced by Bay, another live-action TMNT movie almost happened. In 2009, it was announced that a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was in the works for 2011. Eastman and Laird were on-board as producers, and Young Guns writer John Fusco was hired to pen the script. The movie was described as being a Batman Begins-esque gritty reboot of the TMNT franchise, more in line with the original comics, which were noticeably darker than the 1980s cartoon and prior live-action movies.
Fusco's script was also planned to serve as a direct sequel to the original 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which while far from ultra-violent, drew lots of complaints from parents about its content, leading to TMNT 2 and 3 getting majorly watered down in that department. These plans would have made Fusco's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a "requel" long before Jurassic World and Halloween would popularize the concept. However, Nickelodeon swooped in to purchase the rights to the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise in the fall of 2009, effectively torpedoing the deal, with Nickelodeon's parent company Viacom opting to reboot TMNT as a cartoon series in 2012.
TMNT 2 and 3 (2000s, Animated)
In 2007, Warner Bros. teamed up with now-defunct animation studio Imagi to release the simply titled TMNT animated movie. Reviews weren't great, but TMNT made money, hauling in $95 million on a $34 million budget. Unsurprisingly, two sequels were quickly put into the works, planned to form a trilogy of animated turtle adventures. TMNT 2 would have adapted the comic book storyline "City at War," which saw a despondent Michelangelo seek solace with none other than the Foot Clan. Shredder would have also made an appearance, after being defeated by the turtles prior to the 2007 movie's story.
TMNT 3, which might have ended up a hybrid between live-action and CGI animation, would have seen Krang and the Technodrome arrive from Dimension X to wreak havoc. The live-action elements would have been actors Sarah Michelle Gellar and Chris Evans, who voiced April O'Neil and Casey Jones, respectively in the first TMNT. The late Michael Clarke Duncan was also being considered to voice Commander Mozar, leader of a dinosaur-like alien race called the Triceratons. Sadly, TMNT 2 and 3 were also axed due to the acquisition of the franchise by Viacom/Nickelodeon, leaving fans to wonder what could have been.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 (Reboot Series, Live-Action)
Despite the decidedly negative reviews it received from both critics and veteran TMNT fans, the 2014, Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot movie was a box office hit. This naturally led to sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows in 2016, which again drew awful reviews, but this time the box office to go along with that. Out of the Shadows earned $245 million worldwide, but due to its gargantuan $135 million budget, failed to make a profit for studio Paramount after marketing costs.
Paramount had originally planned to make at least three films in this new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie series, as the actors playing the titular turtles, and April O'Neil portrayer Megan Fox, had all signed three-movie deals. However, the stark financial failure of the second movie forced a dramatic rethink, with Platinum Dunes and Paramount opting not to move forward, likely due to financial worries. Platinum Dunes and Paramount aren't done with the TMNT franchise though, as it was announced in 2021 that Saturday Night Live's Colin Jost and his brother Casey were coming aboard to pen a new live-action movie for the studios. It remains to be seen if the project will have any connection to the 2014 or 2016 movies, but that seems doubtful.