Half-shell heroes are back.
The first trailer for the reboot of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” from Paramount Pictures and Seth Rogen has been released. It’s the latest iteration from Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello after several TV shows and movies, and it’s the second fully animated version to hit the big screen. This version of “TMNT” has a distinctly colorful comic book animation style, reminiscent of 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
Revealed on Saturday, the voice cast includes Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon as Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael respectively. The A-list cast includes Jackie Chan as Master Splinter, Ayo Edebiri as April O’Neil, Rogen as Bebop, John Cena as Rocksteady, Hannibal Buress as Genghis Frog, Rose Byrne as Leatherhead, Ice Cube as Superfly, Natasia Demetriou as Wingnut , Giancarlo Esposito as Baxter Stockman, Post Malone as Ray Fillet, Paul Rudd as Mondo Gecko and Maya Rudolph as Cynthia Utrom.
The trailer gives a first look at these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which emphasizes “teenage” in this iteration. The young heroes have fun and film videos of themselves slicing watermelons with swords and ninja stars, with Donatello at one point jamming one of Raphael’s sais in his leg. They also explain their origin story to April O’Neil, but spend most of the time clarifying that they were once ordinary turtles born from toxic slime, not “goo”, as she puts it.
The characters in “TMNT” are the creations of comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, who first introduced the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” to the world in 1984 in comic book form through Mirage Studios. Point Gray Pictures producers Rogen, Evan Goldberg and James Weaver are overseeing the film with director Jeff Rowe. The last “TMNT” film to hit theaters was the 2016 live-action “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows”, produced by Michael Bay, and before that, a Kevin Munroe animated film released in 2007 .
Development on the film began in 2020, with Rogen’s production company attached in conjunction with Paramount and Nickelodeon Movies. Rowe directed the film from a script by Brendan O’Brien, who previously co-wrote Rogen’s 2014 college comedy “Neighbors.” The film’s 2D-style computer-generated animation was done by animation companies Mikros Image and Cinesite.
The film is set to hit theaters on August 4, 2023. Check out the trailer below.
