TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Co-Creator Criticizes Leaked Script

Over the past week a leaked script for the Michael Bay-produced Ninja Turtles surfaced online. TMNT fans quickly read through it and the overwhelming reaction has been extremely negative. Since then Paramount has been scrambling to take it off the net, but before they could Peter Laird was able to view it and has voiced his concerns, "I think all true TMNT fans should be grateful to the new "powers that be" that they did not allow this wretched thing to go any further. It could definitely be taken as a good sign if that is the case."

I think the script that I read is so fundamentally flawed, and — more to the point — so NOT a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, that trying to make piecemeal changes to it in an effort to make it into something halfway decent is probably a fool’s errand.

In my opinion, the thing should just be tossed out, deliberately forgotten, and the process of generating a new script really a new outline, then treatment, then script — should be started again. I have no insider knowledge of what’s going on with the movie, but from the bits and pieces that have slipped out, it seems like that may be exactly what is happening.

While we’re on the subject of this script… I have to say that while reading it, and especially reading the last twenty pages or so, I couldn’t help but think of the brouhaha which erupted a few months back when Michael Bay was heard to say that in the upcoming movie, the Turtles would be revealed to be “from an alien race”, and following that, all the mental gymnastics indulged in by people who wanted to parse his words and make it seem like “No, he didn’t REALLY say they were going to be ALIENS!”… and then this script makes it way out onto the Internet, and if it is legitimate, it’s painfully clear that YES, the Turtles WERE, in fact, going to be ALIENS.

Now keep in mind that this script is rumored to be one of the reasons for the film being pushed back from December of 2013 to May of 2014. So, we should expect plenty of changes, but a complete overhaul is needed, not just mere tweaking. Another concern is that co-creator Kevin Eastman is actually helping with this live-action version, assisting director Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans), and Kevin not that long ago was gushing about the script. One has to wonder if his judgement is clouded.

By the way, Laird did have one more suggestion, "I'd ditch Bebop and Rocksteady completely."

You can read Skeletor's review of the script here.