Discuss the quartet of pizza-loving, adolescent reptiles here.

Warner Brothers will handle domestic distribution of the first all-computer-animated film in the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, which opens March 30, while the Weinstein Co. will take international territories, Variety reported.

New trailers have gone live for TMNT and 300 and have been linked through SCI FI Wire's Trailers page.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=8

Gellar, Evans Join TMNT
Sarah Michelle Gellar has joined the cast of TMNT, Warner Brothers' upcoming computer-animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, USA Today reported. She will play April, the human researcher who serves as the Turtles' tech-services worker and mother figure. Fantastic Four's Chris Evans, meanwhile, will voice the hockey-stick-swinging Casey Jones, and Clerks filmmaker Kevin Smith also voices a cameo as a greasy-spoon chef, the newspaper reported.
First-time feature writer/director Kevin Munroe is behind the film, which will also feature the voice of Patrick Stewart as Max Winters, a tech industrialist who is amassing an army of monsters in the city. Picking up where the previous live-action movies left off, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael reunite to fight him.

PatrickStewart.org reported that the former Star Trek: The Next Generation star will voice the character of Max Winters in the upcoming animated film TMNT, a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which opens in March 2007.
http://www.thepsn.org/psn/newsbriefs.asp

With 'Simpsons' Flick, 'Shrek 3' On The Way, Animation May Rule In '07
'Ratatouille,' also set for release next year, reteams 'Incredibles' director Brad Bird with Pixar.
by Shawn Adler
"Shrek The Third" (Paramount Pictures)
Take a look at the box-office reports for the weekend and you'll likely see an animated film at or near the top. Never mind which film. Never mind which weekend.
It's been that kind of year for fans of animation, with "Cars," "Ice Age: The Meltdown," "Over the Hedge" and "Happy Feet" all cracking $100 million domestically, and "Open Season," "Monster House" and "Barnyard" right behind them. Sure, most of those films are about animals, but animation doesn't have to be — it's the most flexible of all the filmmaking methods.
Walt Disney once said, "If you can dream it, you can do it." Here are the 10 dreams we're looking forward to in 2007:
10. "Surf's Up"
Before you groan at the prospect of another penguin movie (and we feel your pain), consider that this one is told as a mockumentary. It's "Spinal Tap" meets "Happy Feet," with a story that suggests that penguins invented surfing. The trailer for "Surf's Up" was one of the best of 2006.
9. "Meet the Robinsons"
Remarkably, this is the 46th feature from Walt Disney Studios — what a weird, wild trip it's been since "Snow White." "Meet the Robinsons" follows Lewis, an introverted inventor, as he's whisked to the future to hunt the Bowler Hat Guy and save the world. Social outcast? Check. Missing parents? Check. Rollicking adventure wherein our hero discovers the importance of family? Check. Yup, this one's a Disney film.
8. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force: The Movie"
Concerned about the escalating costs of Hollywood films? Try making one for under $1 million. Master Shake, Frylock and Meatwad team up for a low-budget, big-screen adaptation of their popular Adult Swim cartoon. Here's hoping the filmmakers don't water down their aggressive, mean-spirited humor to capture a larger audience.
7. "TMNT"
They may eat pizza covered in marshmallows and shout "Cowabunga," but while Michaelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and Leonardo are stuck in perpetual adolescence, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' story is about to get all grown-up. The first film in the popular franchise in 14 years, "TMNT" promises a darker, grittier re-imagining of the titular turtles. All shell breaks loose March 23 (see "New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Flick: Slightly Less Pizza, A Lot Less Cheese").
6. "Enchanted"
Has Disney gotten self-aware? A live-action/animation hybrid, "Enchanted" follows a fairy-tale princess (Amy Adams) banished to the real world, where she'll learn whether or not all stories end "happily ever after." It may poke fun at Disney's past, but the talent behind the music is no laughing matter: Eight-time Academy Award-winner Alan Menken ("Aladdin," "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast") teams with Broadway legend Stephen Schwartz ("Pippin," "Godspell"). It doesn't take a magic mirror to predict that we'll be humming their songs all the way to next year's Oscars.
5. "Beowulf"
First Gollum and Davy Jones, and now Grendel? "Violent and very, very weird" is how co-writer Neil Gaiman describes his adaptation of the Old English classic, starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Robert Zemeckis with the same motion-capture technology pioneered on "The Polar Express." How do you get moviegoers interested in a 1,000-year-old epic poem? How about by making it NC-17? Filmmakers are currently debating simultaneously releasing two versions of the film (NC-17 and PG-13) when it hits theaters in November.
4. "Bee Movie"
Jerry Seinfeld starred in the most popular sitcom of the '90s and ended the show at its height. Now he's a bee in an animated film? Get out! Co-written by Seinfeld, the movie centers on a war between bees and humans — a big departure for a man whose show was famous for being about nothing. "Bee Movie" opens November 2.
3. "The Simpsons Movie"
How many times do you think Bart scribbled "We will not cash in on 'The Simpsons' until we have a great film idea" on the blackboard after school? A movie based on the longest-running sitcom in television history is the biggest no-brainer in animation. With legal eagle Erin Brockovich confirmed as a voice, early plot speculation has it that C. Montgomery Burns and his nuclear power plant will play a large role. Excellent!
2. "Shrek the Third"
Good things for this movie come in threes: There's Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots, who together must convince young Prince Artie (Justin Timberlake) to take the crown in Far Far Away. Then there are appearances from Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel (the "SNL" triumvirate of Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri and Maya Rudolph, respectively), who join Fiona to fight off a coup from Prince Charming. This one's a guaranteed hit — the only thing greener than Shrek is the money the franchise continues to rake in.
1. "Ratatouille"
Remember the last time Pixar made a bad movie? Yeah, neither do we. "Ratatouille" reteams the wizards behind "Cars" and "Toy Story" with "The Incredibles" director Brad Bird for the story of a Parisian rat who dreams of becoming a chef. Will it make Patton Oswalt (the voice of Remy) a household name? Inspire a love of French cuisine? One thing's for sure: It'll be competing for best animated film at the Oscars come 2008.
http://www.vh1.com/movies/news/articles/15...006/story.jhtml

WB Announces 2007 Slate
Warner Brothers has released a preview of its upcoming films in 2007, including release dates for the highly anticipated SF films The Invasion and I Am Legend.
The action thriller Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Jeremy Northam, will be released on Aug. 17. It tells the story of a mysterious epidemic that alters the behavior of human beings. When a Washington D.C. psychiatrist (Kidman) discovers the epidemic’s origins are extraterrestrial, she must fight to protect her son, who may hold the key to stopping the escalating invasion.
I Am Legend, starring Will Smith and based on the 1954 horror novel by Richard Matheson, is set to open on Dec. 14. Smith plays a brilliant scientist caught up in the midst of an unstoppable virus which turns humans into vampire-like creatures who can only exist in the dark and will devour or infect anyone in their path.
The following films and release dates also appear on the studio's schedule.
300 - March 9
TMNT - March 23
The Reaping - March 30
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - July 13
One Missed Call - Aug. 24
Trick 'R Treat - Oct. 5
Fred Claus - Nov. 9

TMNT Link: http://movies.go.com/teenage-mutant-ninja-.../d842461/comedy

Turtles aren't reptiles. They are amphibians.

They are reptiles. We learn that in elementary school. They are cold-blooded. Even says so at the very beginning of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles

The ninja turtles are back, and they're winning. The Warner Bros. adventure "TMNT," a computer-animated update of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" comics, cartoons and 1990s live-action movies, debuted as the top weekend flick with $25.45 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Now correct me if I am wrong, aren't they down one turtle?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Return: More Action, Fewer Catchphrases
Filmmakers say March 23's 'TMNT' is about 'family coming back together again' to battle 13 monsters.
by Larry Carroll
SHERMAN OAKS, California — A few days before Christmas, an endless supply of harried shoppers buzzed around the Sherman Oaks Galleria mall with their heads down and their eyes on the last-minute prizes they were hoping to grab. They never knew that just a few hundred feet above them, grown men were obsessing over the kung-fu skills of mutant reptiles.
"Basically, the director, the writer, the storyboards and the animatics [are] all done here," producer Thomas Gray said in a nondescript conference room that could easily be mistaken for the one from "The Office," while giving a most unusual "set visit" just months before his "TMNT" will relaunch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (see "New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Flick: Slightly Less Pizza, A Lot Less Cheese"). "[Every night] we ship it all off to Hong Kong, where we have 450 animators who work on it overnight, and they send it back here by T3 line. They're 14 hours ahead of us. We come in the next morning, and it's all done — it's an amazing process."
In the middle of rows of soulless cubicles, fax machines and Aeron chairs sat Gray, director Kevin Munroe and a handful of talented artists working long hours on "TMNT" (as well as the crew's 2008 remake of the classic Japanese anime show "Gatchaman"). Their stations were covered with dark, moody sketches of sewers, monsters, muscle-bound turtles and apocalyptic visions of New York. But the most noticeable thing was the lack of catchphrase-coining goofiness that permeated the previous three live-action movies.
"It's less cowabunga," grinned Munroe, a shaggy-haired man with a wide smile and a background in the video game business. "['TMNT'] is more a reflection of where we are in the world today. It's a harder world; a grittier world."
"The story is that there are 13 monsters released on the world because of a curse released 3,000 years ago," explained the grandfatherly Gray, as a stressed-out family of shoppers hustled past in the window behind him. "Those monsters are on the loose in New York City, and [new villain] Max Winters has to find a way to get them all back in — they have to be rounded up by Winters and the Foot Clan. They round up the monsters, put them back in this centrifuge that, once the stars are aligned, will zap them back into eternity. They're the classic monsters throughout history, the little Jersey Devil, a Loch Ness monster, and all that is our riff on classic monster movies. [There's also a] Bigfoot, but they're composites more than anything else."
"It's a story picking up where the other three movies left off," added Munroe, a lifelong fan of the heroes in a half shell. "Now the family is in turmoil and they're all apart. Leonardo is training out in the world, and Raphael is taking the law into his own hands, and the other two brothers are trying to support the family with dead-end jobs. The movie is about the family coming back together again."
To prove that this is a long way from the days of Corey Feldman's voice being dubbed onto a green-latex-clad Japanese stuntman, Munroe and Gray unveiled an early Christmas present of their own: Roughly 20 minutes of fast-moving, eye-popping footage. It's dark, it's funny and it seems a bit like a "Shrek" action movie directed by Christopher Nolan.
Fast-moving clips show Winters (voiced by Patrick Stewart) announcing his plans for world domination, Casey Jones (Chris Evans) sporting his signature hockey mask while leaping from rooftop to rooftop, April O'Neil (Sarah Michelle Gellar seeming pluckier than ever) and Master Splinter (Mako, in his posthumous final performance) chastising his adopted turtles. The three most memorable scenes, however, were three sequences that could be straight out of the next Will Smith summer blockbuster.
"The diner sequence, as we call it, has Raphael dressed as the Night Watcher — his Batman-esque alter ego that has him going out as a vigilante at night and taking justice into his own hands," Munroe explained. The humorous scene has Raph responding to a distress call from a cook (voiced by Kevin Smith) who is being harassed by the tiny Jersey Devil monster (think "Lilo & Stitch"), who's more lethal than he looks. "[Raphael] goes out back into the kitchen thinking he's going to face an 8-foot-tall monster. He opens up a freezer door and instead finds a 2-and-a-half-foot lobster-looking creature which proceeds to just kick the tar out of him!"
Another breakout moment — Munroe already admitted it'll be in the video game — is a long, uninterrupted shot of Michelangelo skateboarding through the impossibly complex sewer route he navigates to get home. "The way that's done in [CGI] is spectacular, and if we have a really driving musical score there, I think that scene will stand out as one of the most popular," Gray beamed.
"I always felt that, with the other incarnations of the Turtles' lair, if you made a wrong turn off a subway platform you just might land in their living room," Munroe laughed. "That was always budgetary-based. Being CGI, we thought we'd make it feel like you had to travel for a mile and a half just to get down to the sewer. The idea was to incorporate the character and have Mikey skateboarding all the way down, dodging subway cars, ducking under bridges and wrapping around poles."
The third breakout moment, however, will undoubtedly be the pepperoni on the pizza for Turtles fans: A John Woo-meets-"Kill Bill" rooftop showdown between two angry brothers. "The one on the rooftop where Leo and Raph really duke it out, this is gonna be a very moving scene," insisted Gray, who has owned the rights to the Turtles since 1987. "It's done in the rain — it looks like the quintessential Frank Miller moment — and it's very moving because we've never seen the two brothers really angry at each other, and you don't know to what extent they'll carry forth."
"It was a little nerve-racking bringing it up to Peter Laird, one of the creators of the Turtles, but he was all for it," Munroe said of the turtle-on-turtle action scene. "He said as long as it came from the story development, and didn't feel tacked-on, it was OK. So it comes from a good place, a source of tension between the brothers. We get to witness who would win if Leo and Raph did fight — so let the polling begin online."
After the interview, Gray and Munroe hit the "send" button, and hundreds of Turtle images were transported to the team of animators feverishly preparing to raise shell in time for the film's March 23 release. Then they turned off the lights and headed out the front door of their office building, navigating their way through a throng of embittered shoppers.
http://www.vh1.com/movies/news/articles/1550705/20070124/story.jhtml

Not really, because the movie had only the original four Turtles (Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael). The fifth turtle, Venus, was only in the series Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, and an episode of Power Rangers In Space.

Computers Revived The Turtles
Thomas K. Gray, producer for the new Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles movie TMNT, told SCI FI Wire that today's computer technology makes it much easier to bring the popular characters to life. "It's the CG, that's the reason why we're remaking it," Gray said in an interview. "The new version will be completely animated, and the past movies were a mix of live action and [animation]."
TMNT will have some continuity with the previous live-action Turtles films, and it is neither a remake nor an origin story, director Kevin Munroe said. "It's a rebirth story," he added. "They've been on all these adventures and now are worried that the family is falling apart."
Gray said today's computer-animation techniques made the new film feasible. "We can do so much more with the computer," Gray said. "The first live-action film, we made $132 million, then $84 million, then $42 million on the third film. The budgets started off with $11 million, then $16 million, then $21 million. The studio said the next one would cost $30 million to make and would earn about $25 million, so we were going in the wrong direction."
Gray produced the previous films before joining Imagi Animation Studios, based in Hong Kong and Los Angeles. He originally suggested a Turtles film to them in 2004. The franchise retains a strong fan base, aged 7 to 11 and 18 to 25, Gray said. "There are the fans who watch the TV show today and the fans who remember it years and years ago, and it's not a lot in between," he said. TMNT is set for a March 23 release date nationwide.

Mako Lives Again In TMNT
Mako, the Oscar-nominated actor who died last July 21, will be heard in his final performance as the voice of Master Splinter, the sensei rat, in the upcoming animated TMNT, based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Director Kevin Munroe told SCI FI Wire that the production uses archived recordings of Mako's voice because the actor died a day after his announced involvement in the project. "We had done a couple of pickup sessions with him," Munroe said in an interview. "We got what we needed, and he is still in it."
Munroe added that he was "devastated" when he heard of Mako's death after a long battle with cancer at the age of 72. Munroe said that he recalls the day he announced Mako's involvement in the movie: July 20 at Comic-Con International in San Diego last year. "It was very sad," he said. "I had just announced at Comic-Con that Mako was doing the voice, and the next day, I found out he had passed. We just listened to his voice in the soundstage last week. He was doing a lullaby, a Japanese song, and his voice just filled the room."
The lullaby was an ad-lib by Mako for a scene in which Splinter tries to calm his teenage turtle charges. "It was very unfortunate that Mako died," producer Thomas K. Gray said. "But his voice still remains, and we had a big library of stuff [that we recorded, which] we used for him."
The Japanese-born Mako was the voice of Uncle Iroh in Avatar: The Last Airbender series, and he voiced characters in the Rugrats films, Duck Dodgers, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! and video games such as Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku.
Mako was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1966 movie The Sand Pebbles and co-starred in Highlander III: The Sorcerer, RoboCop 3, Conan the Destroyer, The Green Hornet and Conan the Barbarian. TMNT is set for a March 23 release.

No Shredder In TMNT
TMNT, the upcoming animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, will dispense with the franchise's previous villain, Shredder, director Kevin Munroe told SCI FI Wire. Series creator Peter Laird suggested the change. "Peter wanted to create new villains, and we tried to figure out what to come up with," Munroe said in an interview. "We dumped Shredder."
Munroe added that he was inspired by Batman Begins, which didn't bring back the Caped Crusader's most familiar villain. "I love the way that worked, and how the Joker is hinted at as being the next villain," Munroe said. "I think it would have been a mistake to bring in the Joker as the first [bad guy] in this latest round, and that is why we don't have Shredder in this one."
Instead, TMNT comes up with a combination of monsters and space aliens. "Peter is a huge monster fan," Munroe said. "He liked what we came up with, and he liked the tone of it. We wanted to be a bit like Ghostbusters, with that level of fun and imagination, and still stay grounded with the fact that they are family. We want it to be fun, not too crazy, but believable."
In previous incarnations of the Turtles franchise, Shredder was portrayed as a middle-aged Japanese man with samurai armor. TMNT is scheduled to open nationwide on March 23.

(Spidey's Note: They did show one pic of the Shredder at the beginning of the movie. If you blink, you'll miss it. :ph43r: )

TMNT Is In Crunch Time
The director and producer of TMNT, a new animated film based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, told SCI FI Wire that there's a lot more to do before the film's release, including finding some new popular music. "We're working around the clock to finish the 81-minute action film," director Kevin Munroe said in an interview. That includes 400 people working in Hong Kong six days a week who have been animating the TMNT film since 2004, he said.
Producer Thomas K. Gray added: "Right now, we're picking the music. We have some artists from Altantic Records who are submitting songs that they wrote specially for the film. Some of the artists are fans of the Turtles."
Unsure if they will go with a song or two or just stick to a universal soundtrack, Gray and the filmmakers are certain of one thing: The movie won't feature the techno or disco-like score of the 1990s live-action Turtles movies.
One of the bands under consideration for this new updated version of the Turtles is Panic! At the Disco, whose members grew up watching the Turtles on television and wanted to write something special. The animated feature will be released nationwide on March 23.

TMNT Aims For PG
TMNT, the new animated film featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is contractually obligated to get a PG rating, despite its high level of action. But filmmakers want to go for a higher rating in subsequent movies, if there are any. "The next one we will make PG-13, but we would prefer to make it R," producer Thomas K. Gray said in an interview. "We feel like, though, we have a different standard than other movies."
Gray added: "We will have far less violence than [The Chronicles of] Narnia, ... but because our setting is more reality-based there is ... a higher standard put on us."
Another big problem is that some of the weapons used by the Turtles are banned in other countries, particularly in Europe. The actual use of a nunchaku or metal stars as weapons cannot be shown in the new TMNT movies, although the weapons will be shown hanging from the superheroes' belts. "The film wouldn't be able to be shown in parts of Europe if we had that kind of thing in the movie," Gray said.
Director Kevin Munroe said he had to overcome the stigma of making a "family film." "I had to get over that being a family film is a bad word," he said. "I think this is a big family film that everyone can enjoy, and even I had to get over the negative connotation of that. This is the quintessential Turtle movie, big and fun, so a kid can enjoy it as much as his dad, and vice versa."
Gray said the film will revive the Turtles franchise if the film brings in $100 million domestically. "I think it will do it," he said. "It's going to be a great adventure." TMNT opens March 23.

I was going through some tapes that I wanted to transfer over to DVD, and I found a few episodes from the days when CBS ran the series. One of the episodes, Night of the Dark Turtle, had some stuff that could have come out of Batman's origin story. I might see if I have any more little gems in there and let you know. :ph43r: