We’ve been on TURTLE WATCH here at Movie Buzzers for quite some time since we’re following the progress of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, which is being produced by the fanboy punching bag Michael Bay. First was the announcement that Battle: Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans director Jonathan Liebesman.
Then Alex detailed the controversy over the script written by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) which recast the turtles as aliens from another planet, a script which the two creators of the TMNT, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, publicly disagreed about (Eastman called the script “AWESOME” while Laird called it “fundamentally flawed” and recommended they start over). Most controversial was that Bay’s movie would just be called Ninja Turtles as the turtles would not be mutants, but aliens.
Ultimately Bay denied that the poorly-received script was for his movie (though all signs seem to point to that it was), and the whole project was delayed anyway because of budget issues. Paramount wants Bay to bring the budget down, which seems like an easy fix to me — don’t make the turtles aliens and you can save a whole chunk of money by eliminating some CGI shots and not having to build space ship sets. But that’s probably why I don’t work for Michael Bay.
Anyway, the latest is that Eastman was talking about the project again recently in a Chicago NBC interview, and according to Slash Film Eastman was… shall we say, a bit lofty when it came to talking up the project. Eastman said:
Jonathan Liebesman is going to make a great film. From what I’ve seen of the script, it’s fantastic. Michael Bay has made some great and intense movies. We’re talking about being inspired by movies like ‘The Avengers’ for scope and roots origin and ‘The Raid: Redemption’ for fight scenes and ‘Rise for the Apes’ as far as computer-quality style.
Hmm… that’s some lofty praise for a project in which the only thing we’ve seen is an ugly script. Even the talent behind the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon on Nickelodeon saw no reasons to alter the story much, so I hope Bay and his crew aren’t going to tremendously alter the property in the way it seemed earlier this year.
Regardless if we get “Teenage Mutant” with “Ninja Turtles”, we won’t see this film anytime earlier than 2014.
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