During their CinemaCon panel today, Paramount Pictures burdened us with the news that an R-rated live-action film based on the comic run Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin is in the works. The movie will be solidly in the adults-only camp, which means it will be chock full of violence, gore, and death! I feel bad for the parents, however, who miss the memo that these turtles ain’t for kiddos and take their eight-year-old to see it.
Granted, the original TMNT comics were darker, grittier affairs than the animated and live-action adaptions we’ve gotten on screen. But the average moviegoer doesn’t know that. The Last Ronin is also a more recent comic series—it ran from 2020 to 2022 and was penned by TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. According to Variety, Eastman and Tom Waltz (writer of two TMNT video games: 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and 2016’s TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan) penned the script adaptation.
Here’s the synopsis, per Variety:
Set in a bleak, dystopian future in which Oroku Hiroto, the grandson of the Turtles’ arch-nemesis, Shredder, rules New York City as a totalitarian despot. Hiroto has killed all but one of the Turtles, as well as their mentor, Splinter; the remaining Turtle seeks revenge by wielding all four of their signature weapons.
Uh oh, everyone’s dead! And to my uninitiated eye this premise reads like fanfic of the more family-friendly fare most people know, which I admit makes me more intrigued.
No news yet on who will play the surviving Turtle or when the film will go into production, much less make its way to a theater near you.
