According to Variety, Jonathan Liebesman will direct Platinum Dune’s remake/reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Liebesman has directed Darkness Falls, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Battle Los Angeles, and the upcoming Wrath of the Titans. Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol screenwriters Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec have script duties.
As you may know, Platinum Dunes is Michael Bay’s production company and was behind the generic, awful remakes for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm St., among others. While I am adamant over its writers, I’m not sold on Dunes and Liebesman being right for Ninja Turtles.
No doubt, it will be better than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time, but I hardly see it topping the original 1990 film, which had the perfect balance of dark and light tones, mixing the original violent comic book of the early 80s with children’s animated series, and absolutely no Vanilla Ice!
Personally, I’d much rather see someone like Brad Bird or Joss Whedon direct Ninja Turtles. And what they need to do is avoid telling the origin story all over again. Everyone knows the Turtles’ origin stories, and while I think it would be interesting to see the young Turtles studying Ninjutsu, I’d rather that not be an entire film. Instead, I would love to see them drop the Teenage Mutant part of the title, and give us a “growing up” motif, pushing the Ninja Turtles into their twenties, and perhaps learning to deal with the loss of their Master Splinter. I also think Shredder can use an update, ala Nolan’s Bane.
