Paramount scored a solid hit last year with the stylish and witty Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and the studio already has a sequel to that one bubbling away in a cauldron of ooze, scheduled to land in 2026. Yet it clearly feels there is room to also revisit the characters in live-action form, and to take the concept in a darker, grittier and altogether more violent direction, setting up an adaptation of popular IDW comics title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin.
Turtles comic co-creator Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz wrote the book based on an older story by Eastman and his co-creator Peter Laird, while the art came courtesy of Esau and Isaac Escorza, Ben Bishop and Eastman.
A pitch-black tale of dystopia, murder and vengeance – so you know, not for kids — The Last Ronin is set in a totalitarian future New York where Shredder's grandson has offed three of the turtles and Splinter using artificial ninjas. The surviving teenage mutant swears bloody revenge and enacts it using his and his fallen brothers' weapons (in case you were wondering, the comic book keeps the survivor's identity hidden for a while).
Tyler Burton Smith, who knows a little about chaos and vengeance thanks to writing the 2019 Child's Play and the upcoming Bill Skarsgård-starring action pic Boy Kills World, is on script duty here, while former DC Films boss Walter Hamada is shepherding the movie via his company and a deal with the studio. So… yes, darker than the original 1990s live-action versions and even the Michael Bay produced mid-2010 entries.
In related studio news comes word that the Scary Movie franchise is going the reboot route via Paramount's purchase of Miramax. No word on director or cast yet, but it'll shoot this year.
And Damien Chazelle has managed to make it off the director's naughty step after the massive money-loser that was Babylon, with Paramount still convinced the man who made Whiplash and La La Land can knock out another winner. He's set up a new film from his own script and will be figuring out the cast with the aim of shooting this year. Little is known about it beyond rumours — and we stress that's all they are for now – that it could be set in or around a prison.