It was announced back in May that Paramount (in conjunction with sister company Nickelodeon) had acquired the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for $60 million for Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes. Now Deadline is reporting that Paramount is fast tracking a live action feature film. “The studio is looking at this as its next huge franchise, like Transformers,” say Deadline. Paramount has hired Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, who had credit on Iron Man and wrote the up-coming Highlander reboot, to pen the script. The duo better get to work, because the studio wants it done by October so the film can be hustled into production for a 2012 release. Glad to see so much care is being put into this project. With this sort of regard for quality there is no doubt it will be an amazing film, the kind we’ve grown to expect from the names Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes.
While I loved the Ninja Turtles when I was a kid (I even thought the recent animated TMNT was mostly decent), I can’t say that I actually care what becomes of the franchise. Though it bugs me purely on principle that anyone would go to all the trouble and money to acquire the TMNTs, then just shit out a film to have something to fill an empty time-slot. Oh, Bay, you’re incorrigible.
Well, at least we can count on one thing: whoever Bay casts as April O’Neil is going to be hot as fuck. He’ll care about that.