'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin' Creators Share Update On Live-Action Adaptation
Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz, the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, shared an update on the film’s status after it was reportedly shelved back in November.
The film was going to be an adaptation of the five-issue comic book series that was published by IDW Publishing between October 2020 and April 2022. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic New York City that is run by Oruku Hiroto, the grandson of the Shredder and son of Karai. A lone turtle, who is haunted by the deaths of his brothers works to put an end to Hiroto’s despotic rule. The lone turtle is eventually revealed to be Michelangelo.
Following the book’s success, there have been a number of sequels and spinoffs including The Last Ronin: The Lost Years, The Last Ronin II - Re-Evolution, and the newly announced Training Day that will act as a prequel and show Michelangelo training Casey.
Back in November, Borys Kit at The Hollywood Reporter claimed that The Last Ronin film project was being “put back in the pizza box, according to sources.”
He noted that the new Paramount Skydance leadership “wasn’t keen on having the first non-animated movie in 10 years be a bloody, adult-skewing story.”
However, he did note that “one insider says the studio wants to leave the door open to possibly revisit it down the road.”
Instead, producer Neal H. Moritz was given the greenlight to create a new TMNT live-action film to jumpstart the franchise.
Now, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Eastman and Waltz shared that the film is not dead. Eastman shared, “I don't think the movie's off the table. I think it’s just delayed.”
“Speaking with all the folks at Viacom and Paramount and Nickelodeon who love the Turtles and really have done a fantastic job, whether it be the 2012 series to Mutant Mayhem, I don't think it will not happen," he added. “I think it will happen. One of the things that anybody I've talked to at the companies, they know the fans love and support all things Last Ronin, as much as another group of fans love everything Point Grey [Pictures, production company], Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and everybody has done with the whole Mutant Mayhem series. We're not disheartened at all."
As for Waltz, he said, “It kind of goes back to timing. Let's say, if the movie happened now, Training Day hasn't happened yet...We won't be like George R. R. Martin, where the other media is ahead of us. So we can tell this complete story now, have it done.”
“Training Day is better because of the experience we've already had. So now I think the movie can only be better because now there's more data,” he explained. “There's more to choose from. Maybe you can put that Training Day sequence into the movie. It wouldn't have existed before, or it wouldn't have been ours."
However, he did note that the economy is playing a big factor on whether the film eventually gets made, “At this big macro level for these big businesses, I think they're kind of waiting to see, too, which way the tide goes.”
Nevertheless, he’s optimistic, “But I'm always an optimist, and I think things will start to improve, and I think that's when things start to move. But I just look at it as we get a chance to control what we control, which is the comics and the core story, and then the movie's just that much better for it."
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