A VERY DIFFERENT Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was just announced out of Paramount: an adaption of the recent comic The Last Ronin. Tyler Burton Smith has been assigned to write the screenplay and Walter Hamada is producing.
The Last Ronin is set in a hypothetical (we hope) future where all the Turtles except for Michelangelo are dead. As the last Turtle standing, Mikey has put aside his party-dude ways to finish the mission his brothers couldn’t: take down the forces of the Shredder once and for all. Shredder is also as dead as OJ, but his grandson is carrying on the Foot’s legacy of terror.
The Last Ronin was batted around as a possible graphic novel by Eastman and Laird back when they still worked together, but was abandoned. Decades later, Eastman picked the story back up and decided to finish it with the help of Tom Waltz. The book was released in parts throughout 2020 and collected in one volume later, at which point it became a huge hit.
IDW has held the Ninja Turtles license for a while now, but they’ve never had a success like this. The Last Ronin hit the top of sales charts everywhere and led to multiple spinoffs (a continuation of sorts is in the works, but revealing what it’s about would spoil the last few pages of the book). There’s a Last Ronin video game now in production….and now there’s a movie coming too.
The most interesting thing about this project is that the adaption will be pretty much uncut — the movie is said to be aiming for an R rating. That’s a letter the Turtles property has never chased before. Up to this point all TMNT media has been for a kids or family audience, but Last Ronin will be the first Turtles movie aimed at adults.
We’ll have more info on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin as we get it.