The Comic Book Movies That Reacher Star Alan Ritchson Hated Making

Alan Ritchson is quickly ascending Hollywood's A-list right now, which is interesting considering that the muscle-bound man behind Prime Video's "Reacher" is 42. Despite working relatively steadily over the last 15 years, Ritchson hasn't had anything work out terribly well until recently. Of all those experiences that didn't go as planned, Ritchson seemingly hated nothing quite the way he hated working on 2014's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and its sequel, 2016's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows."

Based on Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's comics, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" has proven to be a shockingly enduring franchise. It's easy to see why being a part of that might be appealing, but Ritchson, who played Raphael in the films, described it as "the worst production experience I've ever had" in a 2019 interview with Collider. The actor did not hold back from there. That was truly just the tip of the iceberg. The Michael Bay-produced "TMNT" movies are not particularly well regarded amongst fans, so perhaps it makes sense that making them wasn't particularly fun, at least for Ritchson. The actor, speaking further, had nothing nice to say about Paramount or the filmmakers.

"It made me hate life so much, so much. They were so bad to us, and they broke so many promises ... I said no, I didn't want to do it because I'm going to waste years of my life, the best years of my career, on something that nobody's even going to know that I'm a part of."

Ritchson, who was coming off of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," resisted taking on the role at first, but the producers managed to convince him. They told him that he would not be "just a guy in a mask." The actor was, in part, motivated by his young son at the time, in addition to promises that were made to him about what the experience would be like.

"They're like, 'No, no, this is a whole new, live-action, one-to-one, you move, they move, you're just as much a part of this as anybody else. When it comes time to get you out there, you're going to be in every country in the world, premieres all over the place. We're really going to get you out there.'"

"Most guys in town said no, just because it didn't pay anything," Ritchson added.

When Bay came on board to produce the film in 2014, it had been a long time since we had seen the heroes in a half-shell in live-action. Paramount hired Jonathan Liebesman ("Wrath of the Titans") to direct, and confidence was high. Eastman even compared it to "The Avengers" at one point. Critics and fans were mixed on the end result, but commercially speaking it was a hit. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" made $485 million worldwide. The success was of little consolation to Ritchson, as Paramount didn't do a lot to ensure his name was attached to that success. As he explained...

"I still have emails that I sent to the president of Paramount because not only would they refuse to allow us to do any press, to talk to people, [but] we found out after the fact that they told people we were refusing interviews, and it wasn't true. They didn't invite us to the premiere."

"They had all of these loopholes we realized after the fact where they didn't have to pay us for anything extra," Ritchson added, stating that he and his fellow Turtles were "ripe for abuse" as a result. The actor shared one particularly brutal story from the production, illustrating his frustrations.

"We were shooting in Brooklyn one day and had a long ride back to Manhattan where everyone was staying. They wouldn't let us in the cars to go home...They wanted to get the crew out of there to get them off the clock. If they stayed, they had to pay them. If we stayed, they don't. The freakin' studio that we're shooting in locks the doors because they're like, 'We're closing up for the night. We've got a cleaning crew coming in...' We're in the parking lots sitting on our backpacks."

Ritchson tried to get out of returning for the sequel to no avail. So, he came back for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows," which was far less successful. This fortunately meant that he didn't have to return for a third installment and was free to pursue other opportunities, such as playing Hawk on DC's "Titans" series. 

The enduring lesson for Ritchson was how he handles projects now as a producer. "When I produce things now, I treat people with the kind of respect that I want to be treated with, that I didn't get on some of these projects," he concluded. 

You can grab "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Out of the Shadows" on Blu-ray or DVD from Amazon.