The city needs heroes. Darkness has settled over New York as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles must work with fearless reporter April and her wisecracking cameraman, Vern Fenwick, to save the city and unravel Shredder’s diabolical plan.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film series, directed by Jonathan Liebesman and starring Megan Fox, Johnny Knoxville, Pete Ploszek, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Alan Ritchson, Danny Woodburn, Tony Shalhoub, William Fichtner, and Will Arnett.
The film was produced by Nickelodeon Movies and Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes, and is distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film premiered on July 29 in Mexico City and opens August 8 in the United States.
The Turtles have appeared in four feature films. The first three are live-action features produced in the early 1990s: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993). The Turtles were played by various actors in costumes featuring animatronic heads, initially produced by the Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. The fourth film is a CGI-animated film titled simply TMNT and released in 2007.
The $125 million 2014 PG-13 film runs 101 minutes, and stars Megan Fox as April O’Neil, Pete Ploszek as Leonardo, Johnny Knoxville as the voice of Leonardo, Alan Ritchson as Raphael, Noel Fisher as Michelangelo, Jeremy Howard as Donatello, William Fichtner as Eric Sachs, Tohoru Masamune as The Shredder, Danny Woodburn as Splinter, Tony Shalhoub as the voice of Splinter, Will Arnett as Vern Fenwick, Minae Noji as Karai, Whoopi Goldberg as Bernadette Thompson, Abby Elliott as Taylor, and K. Todd Freeman as Dr. Baxter Stockman.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (often shortened to TMNT or Ninja Turtles) are a fictional team of four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, named after four Renaissance artists, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu. From their home in the storm sewers of New York City, they battle petty criminals, evil overlords, mutated animals, and alien invaders while attempting to remain isolated from society.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first appeared in an American comic book published by Mirage Studios in 1984 in Dover, New Hampshire. The concept arose from a humorous drawing sketched out by Kevin Eastman during a casual evening of brainstorming with friend Peter Laird. Using money from a tax refund, together with a loan from Eastman’s uncle, the young artists self-published a single-issue comic intended to parody four of the most popular comics of the early 1980s: Marvel Comics’ Daredevil and New Mutants, Dave Sim’s Cerebus, and Frank Miller’s Ronin. The characters expanded into a cartoon series, films, video games, toys, and other general merchandise and have gained considerable worldwide success and fame.
