"What they're doing with the movie is creating its own story, but it has to be true to the source material or we'll get [frick]ing murdered. To be blunt."
Last June when it was announced that the Michael Bay-produced, Jonathan Liebesman-directed
Ninja Turtles was pushed back five months to May 2014 it left many wondering, what could be the cause? Sources for
The Hollywood Reporter claimed it was due to the script not being up to snuff.
Deadline was informed by their sources that the delay was needed so that producers could trim the budget by as much as $10-20M to get it down to $125 million in total.
None of those reasons have been confirmed by Paramount. Well, according to a recent interview that Kevin Eastman participated in with
CBR, there are two brand new reasons.
"Essentially they pushed it back for two reasons: One is the director, Jonathan Liebesman, wanted to make sure he could do the effects to the level he wants them at, and the fight scenes to the way they should be. Also, their release date is almost exactly on the 30th anniversary. May 5, 1984 is when the first Turtles comic came out. May 16, 2014, is almost exactly 30 years after. So basically it's an anniversary movie now."
"I talked to [producer] Scott Mednick yesterday, and he's seen the most recent 50 [script] pages and said it's as good as the last version -- they've really knocked it out of the park," Eastman said. "I've seen a chunk of it, and it's going to be a great movie, despite what everybody thinks."
Eastman is busy working closely with Liebesman, Mednick and writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec. "Doing sketches, drawings and character designs, bouncing stuff around with the writers, talking with the director and the producers -- I'm actively involved," he said.
Jonathan Liebesman's Ninja Turtles will hit theaters May 16th, 2014