'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3' Probably Isn't Going To Happen

Even though the reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 2014 was a success at the box office with over $493 million worldwide, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows did not perform nearly as well, making less than half that with only $245 million worldwide. Producer Andrew Form recently sat down for a chat to talk about the disappointing box office reception and what might have went wrong, not to mention predicting that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 probably isn't in the cards.

Speaking with Collider, the producer was asked about the chances for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, and he bluntly said:

I don't think there's Turtles 3, but I wouldn't say there's never going to be another Turtles movie.

The TMNT franchise will never really be dead, and that's because it can just be rebooted again. If anything, I'm betting next time it'll get an animated reboot. However, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon and Platinum Dunes might want to give audiences some time to put this latest franchise behind them before we get a new one started.

Form says that after the box office numbers came up significantly short, they were forced to be introspective about why, but they don't seem to have figured out a definitive answer:

We were obviously surprised at the box office results. We loved the movie. We loved making the movie. From our first Super Bowl teaser to everything we launched, we felt so good about our material, and for some reason it did not find the audience that the first movie found. And we talk about it all the time, and we tried to figure it out, but we cannot put our finger on what happened. We really can't...We're still so proud of the movie; it just didn't find an audience. We really don't know why.

However, Form did have one possible explanation, and it's maybe that the film fell short of delivering on something that was actually different and better than the first movie. The producer says:

I think one thing we did learn is you really need to give—you can't just add characters to a movie and expect that to be what's fresh. It's a sequel. You have to give the audience something that's really new and fresh. Maybe just adding characters from the canon, that wasn't enough.

The biggest problem that the first movie had was that the story didn't make any sense, and Shredder was incredibly poorly handled as a villain. The tone of the turtles, the action and their dynamic with each other was done pretty well, but not all of the pieces connected to make a cohesive movie. And while the second film decided to embrace the more cartoonish nature of the franchise, not to mention bringing in characters like Krang, Rocksteady, Bebop, Casey Jones and Baxter Stockman, it still wasn't enough. And at the same time, it might have also been too much. Still, Form says they're proud of the final product.

We set out to make a poppy, colorful, fun, add all these fun characters that people had grown up with—and like you said, bring the cartoon to life, and we feel like [director] Dave Green executed that perfectly and made a great movie, so what we set out for, we feel like we accomplished.

While I admit that I had more fun watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows than I did watching the first movie, it still left much more to be desired. I can't say I'm disappointed that we won't be getting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, but I do wish this franchise would have been more effective in bringing these characters back to the big screen so we wouldn't have to reboot them yet again so soon.