Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Co-Creator Says Michael Bay Film Will Be “Fantastic”

Kevin Eastman likes what he’s seen of script for 2014 film

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans nearly crawled back into their shells this summer when various film blogs began to rumble that the new Michael Bay-produced TMNT film was halting production.

But TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman doesn’t think the foursome's new film will be dead in the water.

“All the intentions are in the right place,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier to be a part of it. I think it’s going to be a fantastic film.”

Eastman acknowledged the project has changed significantly since it began three years ago, but said it's heading in an interesting direction.

“Three years ago, I started working on the John Fusco version, which was this awesome, awesome, awesome ‘Batman Begins’ kind of take on the first movie. It was really interesting, but it was maybe a little too edgy for what Paramount wanted. It went through a couple of different versions before Michael Bay took it over and brought in Jonathan Liebesman (‘Wrath of the Titans,’ ‘Battle Los Angeles’) to direct.”

With a focus on fighting scenes and special effects, Eastman says Liebesman’s approach will capture the essence of the ‘80s pop culture phenomenon. Eastman also said that when Liebesman took on the project, he thought that the production schedule was far too short, that more time was needed to do it right.

“Jonathan Liebesman is going to make a great film,” he said. “From what I’ve seen of the script, it’s fantastic. Michael Bay has made some great and intense movies. We’re talking about being inspired by movies like ‘The Avengers’ for scope and roots origin and ‘The Raid: Redemption’ for fight scenes and ‘Rise for the Apes’ as far as computer-quality style.”

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