It’s been almost seven months since production shut down on Michael Bay’s Ninja Turtles reboot and an unused draft of the script leaked online, and it was only recently that tidal wave of fanboy tears finally began to recede. It seemed they were outraged at every step of the production, from Bay’s description of the turtles as “edgy, lovable aliens” to the name change to the rising costs of dandruff medication (I assume). Now, with the project back on and set for June 2014, it seems producer Bay, Paramount, and director Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles) are trying to lull the fanboys into a state of shrug-induced stupor that will leave them susceptible to easy pocket-picking by casting people no one has heard of.

Last week, I broke that Paramount Pictures had set The Hunger Games: Catching Fire newcomer Alan Ritchsonto play Raphael in the reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Allow me to lift the shell off who’ll be playing the other three turtles. I’m told that Pete Ploszek will play Leonardo, Jeremy Howard will play Donatello and Noel Fisher will play Michaelangelo in the Jonathan Liebesman-directed film. Now, the turtles in the original movies were kind of interchangeable, stuffed into those cheesy costumes, but this is supposed to be a more sophisticated Avatar-like approach. [Deadline]

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around “sophisticated Avatar-like approach.” Does that mean the turtles will be CGI dudes that sort of look like the actors voicing them? Will it be motion-capture? Will Andy Serkis stay floundering on his back until someone flips him over in preparation for the role? Dudes, I don’t know. But here are your turtles:

Read the rest of this entry »

Keanu Reeves gets a lot of crap for maybe not being the most incredible actor, but by every account I’ve ever heard, he’s super nice and cool. If you don’t believe it, just look at this picture and ask yourself, is that the face of a not-awesome dude? I think not. No one makes double I-Love-You hands unless he’s an awesome party animal, it’s against the Geneva convention. Anyway, this picture showed up on Reddit last night, with the submitter commenting:

Look who my friends ran into this weekend (he always wears the same outfit??)!

It’s pretty sweet that Kean-Bro was down for a spontaneous celebraish with some hot Asian ninja turts, but submitter has a good point about his outfit. Does Keanu just have a closet full of identical clothes like Bart Simpson? He’s been photographed in almost the exact same clothes on at least four different occasions, and that’s just searching pictures I have saved on my computer (seriously, Photoshop f*cking loves Keanu).

Here’s a visual representation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Artist's conception

In case you missed it, or in case you’ve got better things to do than sit around stressing about what a possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie would be like (well la di da, Mr. Productive Guy), the script for the Michael Bay-produced reboot leaked online over the weekend. Production on that shut down back in June while the release was postponed to 2014, and still no word on whether the production team of Bay and director Jonathan Liebesman (of the execrable Battle Los Angeles) will still be working from the script by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec. But I have to assume that the script, posted by TMNT fan site (ugh, how old are you?) TMNTnotTANT was real, as it got them a cease-and-desist letter from Paramount. So how bad does a script have to be for the studio that purposely hired the directors of Transformers and Battle Los Angeles for them to shut it down? For one thing, Shredder is now an Army Colonel named “Schrader,” and April O’Neal and Casey Jones are star-crossed lovers. I didn’t get a chance to finish the script before it got pulled, but Comic Book Movie summarizes:

18 year old Casey Jones is going nowhere in life. His friends have moved on. His girlfriend April O’ Neal has a prosperous career in NYC. He also works a security guard at a furniture factory. But all of that changes when one night, he stumbles upon a secret underground government hideout and finds four humanoid turtles. From there, he and the reptilian “mutants” uncover a plot to destroy Earth and are set on a course to discovering the Turtles’ secret past.

This script has a bad case of Spider-Man 3 syndrome. Too many villains and none of them given proper time to develop. There are 4 villains in this movie: Shredder (Here, a colonel named Schrader. God, shot me.), Krang (Who only has 2 lines of dialouge and doesn’t come in until the 3rd act.), Bebop, and Rocksteady. The latter two are the only ones who resemble and act like the versions fans know and love. Shredder is given the worst treatment of them all. He’s been so altered that the writers might as well just cut him and replace him with a new character. Splinter is okay, but he’s pretty weak. In every action scene where he’s present, he is always getting his ass kicked. [ComicBookMovie]

But honestly, who cares? If you’re a grown adult who was looking forward to a Ninja Turtles movie I don’t like you already, so don’t tell me how Michael Bay raped your childhood, okay? It’s clear your childhood already kind of sucked, save your adulthood before it’s too late. Still, the script is interesting in a wow-someone-was-actually-making-this kind of way. I got through about 30 pages, and a couple things struck me about it, examples of which I’ve provided on the following pages.

1. Swearing in the set directions. This is not a feature unique to this script, but I always find it strange and intriguing when people writing a PG movie with no swearing curse like sailors in their directions to the director and actors. Sam looked at the f*cking phone. He looked at that f*cking phone like it was the last c*cksucking phone on the tw*tsh*tting Earth. What the f*ck kind of dumb sh*thead could be calling Sam’s black ass at this hour? Adds to the hard-boiled vibe, I guess? I dunno, man.

2. Pop psychology in the set directions. Telling you what the characters are thinking in cheesy ways, etc. That’s cheating, bro.

3. General awkwardness of prose. I didn’t get a chance to screencap every instance of this, but the archaic wording of the whole thing reminded me of that Nic Cage voiceover in Raising Arizona – “The doctor said her womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.” Except, you know, adapted to a kids movie about alien turtles.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cowabummer, dudes. Looks like you’ll have to wait until at least 2014 for that Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie where the turtles are “edgy, lovable aliens” this time. It’s actually the third Paramount property to get an extreme delay after GI Joe was pushed back a year (test audiences hated it) and World War Z did same (AND got a new writer).

The effects-heavy film, which was in preproduction in Vancouver, was set for release in December 2013. That date is being pushed to May 2014, according to sources.
Paramount has halted work on its planned holiday movie for 2013, temporarily laying off preproduction staff and informing those prepping the film that the work stoppage is “indefinite,” according to sources. Another source close to the production says the movie has been pushed by ten weeks.

Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes is producing and Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle Los Angeles) is set to direct from a script by Kevin Eastman and Andre Nemec. Other key players include Bourne franchise line producer Denis Stewart and effects man Dan Bradley (Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol).
The studio had paid media mogul Haim Saban a hefty sum for rights to the property, which had been the basis for three hit movies for New Line Cinema in the 1990s. [THR]

Hopefully it’s off for good. The only thing worse than Michael Bay turning teenage mutant ninja turtles into edgy, lovable aliens are people who think he somehow sodomized their childhood by doing so. Bros? I know we were 10, but Ninja Turtles were always pretty stupid. It’s called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” They were basically “Poochie the dog with attitude,” only in real life, people are totally susceptible to that kind of pandering.

The great entitled dork war of 2012 rages on this week with no hope of an end in sight. Adding fuel to the fire, which was ignited when executive producer Michael Bay announced that the famously mutant turtles would also (or alternatively) be aliens this time around (“edgy, lovable aliens” to be specific), is a new report from Bleeding Cool saying the new live-action reboot scheduled for December will be title simply “Ninja Turtles.” WHAT!? YOU’VE BUTTF*CKED MY INNOCENCE, MICHAEL BAY! I’D LIKE TO REPORT A TURTLE RAPE!

We haven’t been able to get a definite statement as to why this title change is occurring, and our sources are not 100% clear on whether or not the Turtles will indeed be adolescents.
One of our sources has said:
It seems to be driven by marketing. Think of John Carter and how Disney wouldn’t allow for a title with either “Princess” or “Mars”.

And we all know how well that turned out. BUT WAIT, THE NINJA TURTLES MIGHT NOT BE TEENAGERS?!?! This a travesty! I will not stand for ninja turtles who are 32-years-old, like half the people screaming about this! That would just be ridiculous!

Meanwhile, director Jonathan Liebesman (previously of the seminal alien invasion film Battle Los Angeles), has weighed in on edgy, lovable alien-gate:

Read the rest of this entry »