Movies get cancelled all the time. It’s how things work in Hollywood. Still, this one stings. The Last Ronin, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie based on the acclaimed graphic novel, is no longer in development at Paramount as the studio pivots to a more family-friendly direction for the franchise.
Back in 2024, a film adaptation of The Last Ronin was announced, and, true to the spirit of the graphic novel, would have been an R-rated take on the TMNT lore, set in the epilogue of a clash that left all but one of the half-shelled heroes dead and New York City under the iron-handed rule of The Shredder’s grandson.
Alas, it was too good to be true. According to Variety, the project is on an indefinite hold as Paramount seeks to make the next TMNT movie more for the Sonic the Hedgehog crowd. To that end, they’ve enlisted Sonic producer Neal H. Moritz to produce a new live-action TMNT flick.
TMNT has had a mixed reception in the realm of cinema. The original 1990 film is a straight-up classic, a lovely snapshot of late-1980s New York City. It’s a kids’ movie, but with enough edge to still be enjoyed by parents and older siblings. The same can’t really be said for TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze, or the downright bad Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. In 2007, they tried to revive the series with a CGI animated film, but it didn’t do much to move the needle in either direction. However, the series came back in a big way with 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, produced by none other than Michael Bay, which grossed over $485 million worldwide. Unfortunately, that momentum couldn’t be sustained with the sequel, 2016’s “Out of the Shadows,” which sputtered out with just $245 million, and putting the live-action series on ice. Finally, 2013’s Mutant Mayhem was a surprise hit at the box office, earning $181 million worldwide on a budget of $70 million. A sequel is in the works, scheduled for 2027.
I don’t know if The Last Ronin would have been the best direction for a live-action TMNT movie, but I don’t think copying Sonic the Hedgehog is a better idea. Sonic, in both gaming and film, is kind of a singular entity, immune to criticism and just doing its own thing, for better (Sonic Frontiers) or worse (most other Sonic games). TMNT is not as bulletproof as Sonic. How would a family-friendly live-action version of TMNT differentiate itself from the already-successful Mutant Mayhem and its spin-off TV series? Curiously, said TV series, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was just cancelled, so I can’t help but worry about the fate of Mutant Mayhem 2.
To date, the ‘darkest and grittiest’ TMNT movie was the 1990 original. The fate of The Last Ronin reminds me of the Casey Jones film that was cancelled. The project was to come from Jason Eisner, director of Hobo with a Shotgun, and would have revisited the gloriously nasty, ugly side of New York City seen in that original movie, and followed TMNT ally Casy Jones on a quest through the dark and violent New York City night. All that remains of this would-be film is Eisner’s tone reel, which you can see below.
Related: Variety Gets Exlusive First Look at New TMNT Short Film
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
