It’s pizza time for Saturday Night Live writer Colin Jost and his brother, Impractical Jokers writer Casey Jost. According to Deadline, the two have been tapped to co-write a new untitled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film for Paramount Pictures.
Time for More Teenage Turtles
The announcement comes shortly after Colin recieved an Emmy nomination for his work as a writer on Saturday Night Live. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but these will be the same turtles we saw in the 2014 film and its sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. Paramount relaunched the franchise with Michael Bay’s production company, Platinum Dunes, who are also producing this iteration.
The sewer-dwelling, anthropomorphized turtles are a hot commodity right now. They’re set to be featured in Nickelodeon’s All-Star Brawl video game, and the network is launching a new animated movie with comedian Seth Rogen executive producing.
The turtles were originally comic book characters but debuted on television in the 1987 cartoon show. Their strange lives began when toxic chemicals spilled onto them, causing their genes to mutate and make them more human. (A bit of trivia: it’s the same toxic sludge that blinded Marvel’s Daredevil, at least according to the comics!) They were trained in their ninja skills by a sensei, a mutant rat named Master Splinter. Each is named for a different Renaissance painter, but they’re basically your average teenage guys. Besides the whole mutant turtle thing, obviously.
So Many Turtles, So Little Time
The franchise has been rebooted a few times. Following the initial cartoon, which ran from 1987 until 1996, there were three more Ninja Turtles cartoon series. There was even a short-lived live-action television series that ran for one season in the late ’90s. They’ve starred on the big screen, too, in three films from New Line Cinema from 1990 to 1993, and then again in the two reboot films from Paramount. Combined, those two films grossed more than $738 million worldwide. Given that kind of box office success, it’s no surprise that Paramount is ready to get back in the sewers with everyone’s favorite subterranean superheroes.
It’ll be interesting to see how the two comedy writers take on such a beloved franchise. This will be the first time Colin Jost pens something of this magnitude. While he’s one of the key writers on Saturday Night Live, this is a huge IP with a massive fan base. Expectations are high, so he and his brother better bring his A-game or face the wrath of fans of these radical reptiles.
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