'TMNT' Film Series Officially Dead in the Water as New Reboot Takes Over

An upcoming R-rated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot means that the latest live-action TMNT film series is officially dead in the water.

While we may never reach the heights of “Turtle-Mania” ever again, the period in the early ’90s that saw the Ninja Turtles explode onto the pop culture scene and take the world by storm (although we are coming very close, which we’ll get into shortly), the popularity of the pizza-munching heroes-in-a-half-shell hasn’t waned that much since their heyday.

But while the awesome foursome dominated the small screen for decades with all sorts of TV shows (including the original 1987 animated series, we had the 1997 live-action series Next Mutation, the 2003 reboot of the original cartoon, the 2012 CG-animated show, and 2018’s Rise of the TMNT), there was a pretty long hiatus on the theatrical side of the franchise.

TMNT took its first pizza-shaped slice out of the box office with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), which became the highest-grossing independent movie of all time until it was dethroned by The Blair Witch Project (1999) nine years later.

The 1990 film was followed in quick succession by two sequels: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993). But then it all went quiet.

It would take 14 years for the most “fearsome fighting team” to return to the big screen, with TMNT (2007), the CG-animated “four-quel” to the three live-action flicks. But, while a solid entry praised by many fans, it failed to reignite Turtle-Mania, bringing in only $95.6M against its $34M budget, forcing the film series back into the sewers for seven long years.

Related: 5 Reasons ‘Mutant Mayhem’ Is Overrated

In 2014, producer Michael Bay gave the half-shell heroes new life with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), however, its CG-animated, motion-capture Turtles were met with enormous backlash from fans.

Still, the reboot grossed $485M against a $125–150M budget, making it a massive success. Its sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016), though much better than its predecessor, grossed $245.6M against its $135M budget, which many believe was due to the poor critical reception of that first film.

It didn’t take long for Paramount Pictures to confirm that the planned third film in that series had been scrapped and that yet another live-action reboot was underway, with Saturday Night Live writers (and brothers) Colin Jost and Casey Jost attached to rewrite the script. That was back in 2021, the last we ever heard of the project.

Related: Live-Action ‘TMNT’ Movie With R Rating Will Feature Female Ninja Turtles

But while it seemed the project had been flung onto the scrapheap to make way for 2023’s 3D-animated reboot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which was a critical and financial hit, until last year, it was widely assumed that the third Bay film was still in early development — understandable given that there’s always room for both animated and live-action Ninja Turtles.

After all, the first three live-action films were being churned out in theaters while the original 1987 cartoon series was still airing new seasons on television.

However, last year, it was revealed that the next live-action film will be a big-screen adaptation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin (2020), the incredibly popular and ongoing comic book series from IDW Publishing.

This means that the previously planned live-action reboot is officially dead in the water. Not only that, but it also means that Michael Bay’s TMNT film series is completely over, too, as there was some hope the planned reboot would have been some sort of continuation of Out of the Shadows.

Now, the fact that The Last Ronin movie and a sequel to Mutant Mayhem are in the works proves once again that animation and live-action can co-exist within this franchise (or any for that matter). There’s no release date for The Last Ronin movie (or the video game adaptation that’s also in the works), but there’s still a lot of Ninja Turtles content coming up.

Are you excited about The Last Ronin movie? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!