Yesterday produced some most shocking news, as word came through outlets such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter that Nickelodeon has bought the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Peter Laird’s Mirage Studios and 4Kids Entertainment. Plans for the upcoming feature film in 2012 remain underway, and plans for a new CG television series by the creators of “The Penguins of Madagascar” and a “Kung Fu Panda” series have begun as well.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shares a comedic sensibility with the Nickelodeon DNA, with added layers of action and fantasy that have kept this property an evergreen favorite with multiple generations of audiences,” said the President of Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group, Cyma Zarghami.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a property that maintains a very passionate global fan base, is rich with opportunity for a tentpole movie and is exactly the right property for us to work together with Nickelodeon,” adds Paramount President Adam Goodman.
4Kids CEO Al Kahn told employees in a memo that this brings “mixed emotions, since our relationship with Mirage Studios and the property has been a long and mutually successful one, beginning with our relaunching the brand in 2002 to a new generation of Turtles fans.”
GamePro reports that while THQ is the sole dominion of Nickelodeon games, Gamasutra says that deal expires next year. Which is no doubt convenient enough for Ubisoft, who currently holds the reins for TMNT video games.
While Ubisoft and 4Kids declined to give GamePro comment and THQ had not yet responded, Nickelodeon themselves would only say “We plan on fulfilling all current obligations.”
“The language of that statement is a little confusing–how do you fulfill obligations if you don’t have any yet?” says GamePro. “However, the use of the term “current obligations” implies that Ubisoft still has a deal with TMNT.”
Of course, we don’t know what said terms are or how this will play out, so we will just have to wait and see.
Peter Laird, TMNT co-creator and sole owner of the rights for the past nine years (Kevin Eastman sold his half some time ago), has made a post in his blog about the sale, trying to answer some of the questions people have asked.
why did I sell the TMNT? There are a number of reasons, but first and foremost is that I have been doing this TMNT thing for twenty-five years, sixteen of them in partnership with TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman and the last nine as sole owner of the property. That is a long time. It is almost half my life (I’m 55). I never expected to be working on the same thing for this long. And it has worn me down. I am no longer that guy who carries his sketchbook around with him and draws in it every chance he gets. That guy did all of the pre-TMNT artwork you have been seeing on this blog in many of my “Blast from the Past” posts.
I miss — I really, really miss — being that guy.
My fervent hope is that by divesting myself of this wonderful but needful-of-constant-attention property, I might — I just MIGHT — get back to being that guy. Or something LIKE that guy.
“I’ve known for a long time that at some point in my life I would sell the TMNT,” Laird says. “I just wasn’t sure when it would happen. But, as they say, in this case ‘the stars lined up’.”
Laird addresses fans’ concerns by stating that he has faith that Nickelodeon will “treat the property with due respect and make the most of it,” adding that he did not have it in him any more, and that the property “DESERVED a new owner.”
“I am pretty certain that what Viacom/MTVN/Nickelodeon will do with the TMNT is NOT going to be what I would have done with it had I kept ownership,” he says, noting that it may not necessarily be a bad thing, in that if he and Eastman had their way, the old 80’s cartoon would have been more like the recent 4Kids series, and while he likes the newer show, he knows the old one has its fans as well. But where Nick will take the property is unknown.
He closes by noting that only the TMNT property is sold, not Mirage Studios, and that the sale does not mark the end of TMNT. “Unless I am completely naive,” he says, “the sale to Viacom could very well mean a brighter future for the TMNT property than was previously feasible.”
Here’s hoping; my eyes will be on it all the way. With any luck, maybe we’ll get something that takes the best of everything we’ve seen thus far, and then some.
