Last week, Alan Ritchson (Aquaman from Smallville) was cast as Raphael for Paramount Pictures and Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes‘ reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, called Ninja Turtles. The words ‘Teenage’ and ‘Mutant’ have already been removed from the title, which caused a lot of drama when it was announced back in March 2012. It was a bit weird, but we understand that they weren’t going to be teenagers forever.
On March 25, 2013, the studio announced that the other three turtles have been cast as well, with Pete Ploszek (Parks and Recreation) playing the Turtles’ leader, Leonardo, Jeremy Howard (Breaking Bad) will play Donatello, and Noel Fisher (Showtime’s Shameless) will be wise-cracking Michelangelo.
Ninja Turtles, directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles), is going to be more sophisticated in the creation of the Turtles, using performance capture similar to James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar – which should work well for the actors in bringing the characters to life. The news of the film’s plot that makes the Turtles aliens instead of mutants has pissed off a lot of people, but in the filmmaker’s defence, the plot initially said “Aliens invade Earth and inadvertently spawn a quartet of mutated reptile warriors – The Ninja Turtles.”, which doesn’t necessarily sound like the Turtles are going to be aliens. But we won’t know until the movie comes out, right?
Megan Fox was previously confirmed as playing reporter April O’Neil, which was a big surprise to us because of the falling out she had with Michael Bay a few years back, after comparing him to Hitler. She lost her role in the franchise and was replaced by English model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
In any case, we’re going to keep our fingers crossed and hope that Bay delivers a solid reboot of the Turtles, which could open up a ton of franchise opportunities, unless the Turtles really ARE aliens. Then, we will have problems. You listenin’ Bay?
Ninja Turtles is set to be released June 6, 2014.
