Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem attempts to bring a fresh take on the franchise with a stylized animation and playful, adolescent humor, including a recurring milking joke. Seth Rogen, the writer, shares that he was apprehensive when presenting the movie to Nickelodeon executives for the first time.
Variety reports Rogen’s nervousness while presenting Mutant Mayhem to Nickelodeon’s president of animation, Ramsey Ann Naito. Rogen stated, “We were so nervous and scared that we were going to show them a scene from the movie and they would be like, ‘What? No.” However, to his relief, Nickelodeon loved the movie and showed their full support.
“They didn’t discourage us from making it insane. They probably tried to make us cut one or two milking jokes, but we said no.”
It is apparent that Nickelodeon (and Paramount) had confidence in the animated movie, as they have already announced a Mutant Mayhem TV series and a sequel. The projects were revealed to be in development a week before the movie premiered in theaters. Mutant Mayhem went on to make over $180 million at the worldwide box office, according to Box Office Mojo.
As for the Mutant Mayhem sequel, it seems that Rogen and director Jeff Rowe intend to feature Shredder as the main antagonist for the turtles. Rowe said, “Shredder is the coolest villain in the TMNT lore. He is this world’s Joker, and we had considered using him for the first film, but it didn’t work for a lot of story reasons. Ultimately, it felt good to not lean into him as a character, but now we have a chance to, and we’ll see how that goes.”
For more information, read GameSpot’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem review.
