The last Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was not a runaway success. However, the franchise is still popular. What does all this meet for the fate of martial arts amphibians on the big screen? Well, according to one of the recent film's producers, a direct sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is unlikely, but another movie starring the characters is not.
I don't think there's Turtles 3. But I wouldn't say there's never going to be another Turtles movie.
While Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows might not technically be considered a bomb, it made almost $250 million on a budget of $135 million, it made about half what the previous film was able to do, and didn't even break $100 million at the North American box office. To be sure, the performance was not the studio was hoping for, even if reviews of the sequel were actually slightly better than the previous entry. However, based on producer Andrew Form's comments to Collider here, it would seem that while continuing this particular part of the franchise is unlikely, the turtles as characters probably aren't going anywhere.
This would seem to imply that it's already time to reboot the Ninja Turtles. Andrew Form isn't talking about specifics here so while it's unclear if he's talking about existing ideas for another movie. It seems much more likely that's talking in the hypothetical sense. Will there be another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie someday? It would seem to be a virtual certainty that there will be. It would mean a major shift in Hollywood's entire way of thinking if they were to decide to put the property on the shelf. At the same time, the Ninja Turtles aren't exactly Spider-Man.
This isn't the sort of brand that we see a studio working to reboot quickly like Sony did with the Amazing Spider-Man films. If fans weren't willing to fill the theater for Out of the Shadows then any reboot that came out too quickly would likely suffer the same fate. The much more likely situation is that they'll wait a few years until the current films are a bit more in our memory, and then redesign the characters.
Of course, it's possible that, if a new Ninja Turtles movie took an entirely different approach, it could hit a lot sooner. We know that the Ghostbusters franchise is working on an animated feature unrelated to the recent reboot. If a TMNT film did something like that, they could release it soon and likely not have to deal with negative feelings stemming from the previous series. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.
Would you be excited to see a new Ninja Turtles movie now, or would you rather wait a few years? Would you rather see a direct sequel to Out of the Shadows? Let us know in the comments.
