Nickelodeon To Revive Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles For TV/Film After Acquiring Global Rights For $60M

COMMENTS (12)

• That has to be BEST PRICE EVER paid for a major ongoing franchise.
  You can start minting the money now.
  Genius!

  Comment by Lytton Strachey — Wednesday October 21, 2009 @ 9:29am PDT  Reply to this post

• Lytton is right – this could wind up being a huge bargain. 90s Nostalgia is the new Superhero Movie: the same generation buying tickets to Transformers and Where the Wild Things Are will line up for a good TMNT movie. Provided Nick doesn’t pull a GI Joe on the franchise, Viacom could be in for a windfall.

  Comment by Bannon — Wednesday October 21, 2009 @ 11:28am PDT  Reply to this post

  • Interesting contrast with G.I. Joe. Personally, I think Nick might be happy with a movie that grosses over 300 million dollars. You must have very big hopes for the Turtles to think 300m would be a fiasco.

    Comment by BoxOfficeMojo — Thursday October 22, 2009 @ 8:47am PDT  Reply to this post

• Is Nickelodeon going to run commercials of their newest acquisition shaking their ‘big butts’ like Spongebob in a continuation of their sleazy child sexual exploitation strategies? Lowest common denominator sleazebags. Pray for the turtles.

  Comment by drspock — Wednesday October 21, 2009 @ 3:21pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Yes! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!!!! Can’t wait.

  Comment by Natalie DeJohn — Wednesday October 21, 2009 @ 3:31pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Tubular!

  Comment by Jack — Wednesday October 21, 2009 @ 7:37pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Considering the last TMNT feature made something like 53 million domestically and it was just two years ago, I think this is going to have to be a long term play for Nick. That said, a 60 million dollar price tag for the franchise and presumably for all the underlying copyrights/participation in any of the previously produced film and TV content, it seems like a pretty good deal.

  Comment by Raphael — Wednesday October 21, 2009 @ 7:37pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Nick will fuck it up. They fuck everything up.

  Comment by C.C. — Saturday October 24, 2009 @ 10:57pm PDT  Reply to this post

• TMNT is a dead franchise. The last film died on the vine and barely broke even with the DVD release. Worse, the property is completely incompatible with Nickelodeon’s brand, which is girl-friendly and violence-adverse. Nick has shown again and again that they don’t have the stomach to make an action show, so what are they going to do with NINJAS other than water them down further?

  Worse, Nickelodeon does NOT get participation or underlying copyrights in the previously produced film and TV content… those old shows remain the properties of their producers, so anything new that Nick does spawn will simply be undermined by the sudden re-emergence of the old material timed to cash in on Nick’s new version.

  For what Nickelodeon wasted ($60M) on buying this dated old dreck, they could have produced 1500 pilots. If even ONE of those pilots had turned into the next SpongeBob SquarePants, that would have been a far, far better use of that money. SpongeBob has generated over $20 Billion for Nickelodeon… there’s no possible way to squeeze another $20 Billion out of ANYTHING related to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

  Nick 2009 has become Disney 1993 — which is when a bold upstart named Nickelodeon came into the kids cartoon market with new ideas and a new approach and ate Disney’s lunch. I wonder who’ll eat Nickelodeon’s lunch this time around?

  Comment by Bitter Cartoonist — Tuesday October 27, 2009 @ 11:30am PDT  Reply to this post

  • I’m kinda unsure about your implication that TMNT is not “girl-friendly”. You’re right about the most recent movie, but I think you’re sort of overstating it by saying TMNT is “incompatible with Nickelodeon’s brand”. You might want to do some research on a little show called Avatar: The Last Airbender…

    Comment by Ninja Girls — Friday October 30, 2009 @ 6:34pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Yeah, Nick really fucked up that Spongebob thing…and by the way the Burger King “Squarebutts” ads were great (and not aired on kids nets.) Oh, and that Penguins of Madagascar or iCarly really sucked. Damn you, Nickelodeon for buying another property (on the cheap)and making it so damned watchable.

  Comment by jimbob — Tuesday October 27, 2009 @ 2:24pm PDT  Reply to this post

• TMNT is a wonderful cartoon and it depresses me to learn that Nick has bought this franchise. CG-animated?? really??? that’s awful.. that ruins it.

  Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday February 24, 2010 @ 12:54pm PST  Reply to this post