Variety is reporting tonight the announcement of a new live action TMNT film to be produced with a target release date of sometime in 2011. Details on the project are few at this point, but the film will apparently focus on the characters' origins.You can read the full release here.
Thanks to Will Tupper for the heads-up!
Hmm... really.
ReplyDeleteThe way things are right now, coupled with the way Hollywood is all the freaking time... makes it hard for me to get excited about this.
But still, I wish the project well and they've got my money at least once no matter what they do.
Personally I was still hoping for more from Imagi though.
I am actually quite reserved about the whole thing, too. And Peter just posted some more stuff on his blog... this bit here concerns me:
ReplyDelete"As you may recall from some of my previous comments, our initial discussions regarding the next film had to do with what we were calling a "hybrid" -- live action with realistic Turtles rendered in CGI and blended in. This new idea -- which, frankly, I am VERY pumped about -- will have actors and stunt performers in full Turtle suits for filming in live action. As of right now, there is talk of using CGI to do "face replacement" for the suits so that we can get those great, expressive faces possible with CGI."
Live action suits with "face replacement" sounds absolutely horrible.
Having done some television puppetry, the whole face-replacement thing isn't something to worry about. It's what they'll be doing on Where the Wild Things Are, and it was done on Babe and a number of other films involving animatronics. It was used all through the recent Star Wars movies, the Lord of the Rings movies and countless others. It's by no means new, but if done right, it'll look fantastic. Henson was going to use the tech in the new Dark Crystal as well.
ReplyDeleteDoing an origin story again seems like such a tremendous waste of time and energy. As I recall one of their press statements about TMNT sadi something like "everyone knows the origin story of the characters, why would we do that again." The original live action film is SO perfect, well- I certainly hope there's more to it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as CGI faces... well I still side with puppetry for realism, but if they're truly willing to hybridize maybe we'll get something like what Henson Studios has cooked up lately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJ83ztv6Jo
which seems like a really intuitive system.
Why are they telling the origin story again?
ReplyDeleteUnless it's more like Batman Begins, where it involves, uhh... them sparring... in the sewer...
I wish one of these movies would take the Ninja Turtles into space instead of treading the same ground over and over.
I agree about the needless retelling of the origin, but I have to disagree with the space thing. There's been too much space in TMNT in recent years for my taste, so I prefer them to be firmly on the ground.
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