It’s a good time to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan on the animated front right now. The Paramount+ subscription-exclusive Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted its second and final season, the short film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 – Lost in New Jersey will screen with The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run next week on the 2025 movies schedule, and Mutant Mayhem 2 is set for a fall 2027 release. On top of all that, though, there’s also a new live-action TMNT movie in the works, and Jeff Rowe, the director of Mutant Mayhem and its forthcoming sequel, told CinemaBlend what he’d like to see from this next reboot.
Last week, Paramount dated the live-action Ninja Turtles movie for November 17, 2028, a little over a year after Mutant Mayhem 2’s arrival. When I recently interviewed Jeff Rowe, the director of the Mutant Mayhem movies and executive producer of Chrome Alone 2, what he’d like to see from this next live-action go-around with the Turtles, he first told me about how he’d have conflicted feelings if “they cast teenage voices as the Turtles,” which is one of the distinguishing elements of his animated movies in the franchise. Then he said the following:
I would love to see physical costumes again, like the 1990s. Doesn't make any sense, would put a lot of limits on the film. I think [it’s] probably filmmaking poison, but man, those were cool in the '90s.
That would be a bold path for the new live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to take. Obviously having actors in Turtle suits with mouths being moved with animatronics was a necessity for those early TMNT movies, and one could argue they still hold up to an extent. But now there’s CGI to bring the Turtles to “life” and make them look more realistic… well, as much as can be expected when it comes to gigantic anthropomorphic reptiles that know martial arts.
Now granted, there’s something to be said about practical effects being the better way to go for organic quality, like if we’re talking about aliens in the Star Wars franchise. But when it comes to Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael, Jeff Rowe doesn’t think his wish will be granted for this upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot. After he gave that answer, I joked about how this would be another opportunity to spot an actor’s head within the mouth of one of these Turtle costumes, which Rowe laughed at and called the “weird horrifying Donnie mouth.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, skip to the 56-second of the below video and witness this nightmare fuel:
Yeah, I think we can all do without that kind of horrifying visual again, but it would be interesting to see what a practical Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film suit would look like in the late 2020s. All we know for certain about this reboot besides the release date is that Neal H. Moritz, the producer behind the Fast & Furious and Sonic the Hedgehog franchises, will carry out those same duties here. Hopefully we’ll get a better idea of what’s being envisioned for this live-action movie in 2026.
