There's a lot of mystery and intrigue surrounding Seth Rogen's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, but today, one layer was peeled back. The official title of the upcoming computer-animated film is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.
The announcement was made on Rogen's Twitter account, where he also shared some really cool artwork. You'll notice that it also contains a release date: August 4, 2023. This is actually one week ahead of the previously announced date, with the movie set for exactly one year from today. As the image confirms, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem will release exclusively in theaters.
Not much is known about the film or its plot, but Rogen has been drip feeding us concept art and vague details over the past couple of months. In February, we were treated to concept art for the CGI reboot, giving us our first look at the character designs for Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo. At the time, Rogen had explained that he intended on emphasizing the "teenage" aspects of the Turtles.
Not only was this evident in their designs but also from the humor in a previously released teaser image of Leonardo's science class notebook shared by Rogen. The three types of mutation listed on Leo's notes make a lot more sense now that we know the title of the film. While it's still not fully clear, perhaps the mentioned mutatations -- deletion, duplication, and translocation -- serve as a clue.
Details remain elusive and we still don't know who will be voicing our beloved heroes in a half shell. Nor do we know which non-Turtle characters are involved in the movie. However, going back to the notebook, a reminder to apologize to April [O'Neil] suggests she could also appear in the film.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem will be co-directed by Jeff Rowe. Previously, Rowe had written and co-directed Netflix's critically acclaimed animated film The Mitchells vs the Machines. Co-directing alongside him is The Mitchells vs the Machines storyboard artist Kyle Spears. Now previous success doesn't necessarily carry over to new projects, but The Mitchells vs the Machines was a fantastic movie with near universal acclaim, so at least we know TMNT: Mutant Mayhem is in good hands. If Brendan O'Brien can deliver a solid screenplay, then fans should be in for quite the treat. Not to mention, Seth Rogen and his longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg are both on board as producers.
With a release date just a year away, we should hopefully start to see some official artwork and perhaps a proper synopsis for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem in the weeks or months ahead.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is just one of multiple TMNT projects on the way. Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie will be hitting Netflix tomorrow, August 5, while Paramount+ is getting a series of villain-driven TMNT films.