News From The Future: Michael Bay Ruins Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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Michael Bay To Produce 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Reboot
'Transformers' director has plenty of experience adapting kid-focused properties for the big screen.

By Eric Ditzian

In the spring of 2009, at the same time that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles celebrated their 25th anniversary as the gnarliest martial-arts-enabled reptiles in the pop culture universe, we got some news that Michelangelo and his buds would surely dub "wicked." A new live-action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie was in the works, almost two decades after the original.

Friday (May 28) brings word that the upcoming flick will be produced by a guy with more than a little experience adapting long-established kid-focused properties for the big screen: Michael Bay.

Deadline.com reports that Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners will take on producing duties after Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon approached them with the property. Bay, of course, produced and directed two "Transformers" movies for Paramount and is ramping up to shoot a third one this summer.

Even before the movie was announced last year, MTV News spoke with "Turtles" co-creator Peter Laird about what a rebooted franchise might look like. "I can say that at this point there are a lot of positive feelings about a 'Batman Begins'-style 'reboot,' which would, of necessity, include a retelling of the Turtles' origin story," he said. "Having said that, I would also be into an all-new story, if it was decided that that was a more desirable direction. Either way is fine with me, to be honest!

"Simply telling the story of what happened in the first issue of the 'TMNT' comic book would be a pretty short movie, so I suspect other things from the Turtles' history in the comics might be brought into it," Laird continued. "I would not be unhappy to somehow see the tale of Baxter Stockman and the robotic 'mousers' folded into this movie, as well as some elements possibly setting up the TCRI connection for a possible sixth (or seventh) movie. But I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself there."

While I don't want to dismiss Bay out of hand (despite the thread title), I have absolutely no idea what he's going to do with this franchise. I can only predict run it into the ground, EXCEPT that in my experience of it, TMNT doesn't really lend itself to explosions, so it seems like he'd HAVE to ruin it in a different manner, which could lend itself to success.

In any case, I actually enjoyed the CGI TMNT that came out a few years ago, personally they should've kept going with that writer or director 'cause it wasn't half bad outside of the actual plot points (dialogue and characters were all handled well, the actual plot was stupid but everything else was actually awesome).