'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Animated Series Reboot Trailer

We normally don't cover TV but this weekend's news has been really slow.  Plus, it's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  I mean, I grew up on this stuff and remember even liking pizzas a bit more because it's what the turtles ate.  

Well if you're a fan, I'm sure you heard that TMNT movie is in development by Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes but also a series is releasing on Nickelodeon in 2012.  After watching the trailer, it'll be completely different from the series back in the day and I'm not sure I like it.  But maybe it's because I never imagined it in this way.  The new series will be entirely CG animation.  I'm fine with CG but don't the characters look a bit pixelated?

Anyway, see the trailer below and let me know what you think:

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'Ninja Turtles' Reboot Hires 'Iron Man' Writers

If 2012 will really be the end of the world, there's going to be plenty of entertainment options to lead us to the light. Paramount now wants to lock in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, another attempt at a live-action franchise with this well-known title.

To do that, the studio has moved to hire Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, co-writers of the first Iron Man movie. That's the good news. The bad news is that they also co-wrote Punisher: War Zone...and so far, that's about it. One of those movies made $585 million worldwide, the other only $10 million. But the median amount is almost $300 million, and that would be a decent amount for a new TMNT flick.

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Michael Bay Rebooting 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'

Once more with feeling! We're going to get another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, this time a live-action update of the popular comic book/TV/toy line heroes. The first batch of movies was in the 1990s, then a really uninspiring animated film came out in 2007. Great trailer for that one; it just wasn't much of a movie.

Platinum Dunes will work on the film with Nickelodeon, which bought the rights for $60 million at the end of last year. You might think that's a lot, but the four movies combined made about $400 million, and sure, the biggest percentage of that damage was done by the first film in 1990, but they all made at least twice their budget, and only the third live-action flick failed to triple its costs. So there's certainly evidence they can make money again. Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form will produce for Platinum Dunes, known primarily for its horror remakes, though this isn't too far a broad jump outside what they normally do: Take a proven property, add hot chicks and bunch of color contrast to the cinematography, and never invest more than $40 million.

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'TMNT' and 'Astro Boy' Studio Stops Making Movies

Imagi International, the company that backed a couple animated flicks in the past three years, has tapped out. "No mas," said the Hong Kong-based company, although probably not in Spanish.

The studio most recently produced Astro Boy, and that's about all you need to know, really. People just didn't warm up to it. I suspect it might have had something to do with the main character dying in the opening scene. Whatever the reason - either that or stateside unfamiliarity with the character or both - Imagi lost about $40 million on Astro Boy, even though its 2007 TMNT made a bit of money.

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'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Come Back to Life

Great, maybe this time they'll get it wrong again.

I was jumping out of my seat (that's hyperbole) when I saw the first trailer for the 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, the one shortened to TMNT. The animation was great, and that was, I believed, how we were meant to see the Turtles. But the movie was terrible. No script. Does it every time. However, The Mirage Group, which owns the rights to the Turtles, thinks there's still life in this property yet...so, we're getting another live action movie in 2011. This will be the fifth film total, and so far, they're maybe one-for-four. Probably not, because the last three drag down the first one, which wasn't that great to begin with.

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