A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles CG animated movie is in development from Seth Rogen. After beginning life as an underground comic book and later an animated TV show, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived in movie theaters in 1990 with the titular heroes played by actors in suits. The massive success of that film, which made $202 million on a reported budget of $13.5 million, led to a franchise with sequels released in 1991 and 1993.
That TMNT series would eventually peter out (the final film made just $54.5 million on a reported budget of $21 million), but the Ninja Turtles would not disappear forever from movie screens. Indeed, the quartet would return in 2007 for an all-CG animated feature entitled simply TMNT, then in 2014 for a live-action reboot produced by Michael Bay and featuring CGI mutant heroes created using state-of-the-art performance-capture technology. That reboot would prove to be another huge box office success, grossing $493 million worldwide on a reported budget of $125-150 million, leading to the 2016 sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. Unfortunately, that film would fail at the box office with just $245 million in grosses on a reported budget of $135 million and plans for a third film would be scrapped.
Now however, it appears the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are headed back to screens for yet another reboot, this time with Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures leading the way. As reported by Deadline, the newest Ninja Turtles movie will like 2007’s TMNT be an all-CG animated film, the first such feature for Nickelodeon Animation Studio. Paramount will take on distribution of the film, which is being written by Brendan O’Brian (Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates).
Prior to this, Nickelodeon Animation Studio has dealt only in traditional animation and mixed live-action/animation for its feature films, a roster including major hits like The Rugrats Movie ($140 million), The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie ($140 million) and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water ($325 million). Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures meanwhile has largely occupied itself releasing comedies that by-and-large fall into the sophomoric/stoner category, including the animated 2016 film Sausage Party.
It remains to be seen how the sensibilities of Rogen and Nickelodeon will mix on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the all-CG animated film, but it seems likely the movie will skew more toward the family-friendly end of the spectrum (at least going by Nickelodeon Studios’ prior output). Of course, in many people’s minds, SpongeBob SquarePants basically is a stoner comedy (Pete Davidson’s character enjoyed it a lot in this year's The King of Staten Island), so perhaps there isn’t that big a gap between the tastes of stoners and kids who love Nickelodeon animated shows and the Ninja Turtles.
Source: Deadline