Cowabunga! Seth Rogen-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle reboot has an official release date
When Seth Rogen is not at home honing his ceramic skills, he’s working on the film reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The actor and producer shared a scribbled note from Leonardo the turtle. On the page, he makes references to his fellow sewer-dwelling mutant brothers–Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello–and their journalist friend April O’Neil (Leo needs to apologize to her for something, tsk tsk). At the top of the page is the date August 11, 2023, which Rogen confirmed in a later tweet as the official release date for the reboot film.
Other details in the science class notes include Leonardo’s signature sword, surrounded by the words “loyalty” and “honor, indicative of Leo’s nature as the leader and eldest brother. Rogen also shared that the margin-filled notes resemble the notes he used to take.
The CG-animated film TMNT reboot is in production with Rogen and Nickelodeon, with Paramount handling the global distribution.
Rogen also says that the film will focus on the “teenage” part of the title, not giving into the current pressures to make a gritty, adult version of the crime-fighting, pizza-eating turtle teens.
“As a lifelong fan of Ninja Turtles, weirdly the ‘Teenage’ part of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was always the part that stuck out to me the most,” Rogen told Collider last year. “And as someone who loves teenage movies, and who’s made a lot of teenage movies, and who literally got their start in their entire profession by writing a teenage movie, the idea of kind of honing in on that element was really exciting to us. I mean, not disregarding the rest, but really using that as kind of a jumping off point for the film.”
The heroes in a half-shell will make their next appearance in 2023, building upon the original release of the comic in 1984, and the animated series in the ‘90s. The upcoming film adds to the many TMNT reproductions such as the Michael Bay-produced 2012 reboot series and the 2014 film adaptation starring Megan Fox and Will Arnett.