We learned that there’s a new live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in the works last month, and now we know when it’s slated to hit theaters. Don’t start gassing up your Technodrome just yet, though; it’ll be three years before the Turtles return to theaters. The film is set to premiere in theaters just in time for 2028’s holiday movie season, on November 17.
According to reports, the new film will be a live-action/animation hybrid, akin to Paramount‘s successful Sonic the Hedgehog franchise; that series also has a movie due out in the 2028 holiday season, dropping a month after Ninja Turtles on December 22. Paramount, fresh out of an arduous merger with Skydance and looking to maximize its assets, is hoping that Ninja Turtles can match the Sonic franchise’s winning combination of reverence for the source material with family-friendly humor. So far, Paramount has made three Ninja Turtles films since acquiring the property in full from co-creator Peter Laird in 2009; two live-action films with CG Turtles (2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its 2016 sequel, TMNT: Out of the Shadows) and one fully animated film, 2023’s Mutant Mayhem. All three have at least broken even, but none have had the blockbuster success of the Sonic films.
What Is ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’?
Created by Laird and creative partner Kevin Eastman in a self-published 1984 black-and-white comic book, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are four pet turtles who were abandoned in the sewers and exposed to mutagenic goop, transforming them into humanoid form. Trained in the art of ninjitsu by their sensei and surrogate father, the similarly mutated rat-like Splinter, the quartet (named after Renaissance artists Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello) battle evil in New York City; foremost among their foes are the shadowy Foot ninja clan and their metal-masked leader, the Shredder. Initially intended as a parody of Frank Miller‘s Daredevil comics, the comic succeeded beyond Laird and Eastman‘s wildest dreams, kicking off a black-and-white comics boom in the 1980s. However, the characters would not be limited to the comics page for long. Within a few years, they were the stars of a popular cartoon series, a string of live-action movies, and a successful action figure line. Decades later, they remain a permanent fixture in popular culture.
Unfortunately for TMNT fans, the new film came at the expense of a planned R-rated adaptation of The Last Ronin, a popular 2020-2022 comics series. It reunited Eastman and Laird to explore a post-apocalyptic future New York in which the last surviving Turtle seeks to avenge his fallen brethren.
A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film is set to hit theaters on November 17, 2028.
via Collider