Looks like Paramount really is serious about getting the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back on their feet as a viable live action franchise: the studio has hired the men who wrote** Iron Man** (well, a couple of them, anyway), Art Marcum and Matt Holloway to bash out a script.
With Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller overseeing the new film with a host of other producers, the plan is for the writers to deliver their first draft by October so the film can find a director and gear up to shoot early next year to hit a 2012 release date. Because rushing screenplays always makes for great movies!
The pizza-loving, Foot-fighting mutant teens have been largely off the boil since their mid-90s heyday, with only Imagi’s CGI ‘toon **TMNT **hitting the radar with any cinematic force since **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III **arrived in 1993. While the heroes in a half-shell did manage a brief revival on TV, Paramount is looking to return to the heights of the first movie, blending actors with CG-crafted creatures.
Marcum and Holloway, meanwhile, moved on from one Marvel hero to an anti-hero, writing the latest attempt to bring The Punisher to the screen, and they’ve also written on the likes of the new Highlander film and the Buck Rogers movie that Paul WS Anderson wants to tackle at some point in the future, preferably before the 25th century rolls around.