Seth Rogen's New 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Will Lean More Into The "Teenage" Angle

Back at the end of June, we got some surprising news about the future of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The heroes in a half-shell are getting rebooted yet again, but this time as a computer animated movie from Nickelodeon Animation Studios and Paramount Pictures. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are on board as creators and producers through their Point Grey Pictures production banner, and the former recently opened up about how this iteration of the turtles will be different.

Collider caught up with Seth Rogen in support of his upcoming HBO Max original movie An American Pickle. Though Rogen couldn't yet divulge any details about the story, he did briefly discuss his approach to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and how it will stand out from the previous adaptations. Rogen said:

"As a lifelong fan of Ninja Turtles, weirdly the 'Teenage' part of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was always the part that stuck out to me the most. And as someone who loves teenage movies, and who's made a lot of teenage movies, and who literally got their start in their entire profession by writing a teenage movie, the idea of kind of honing in on that element was really exciting to us. I mean, not disregarding the rest, but really using that as kind of a jumping off point for the film."

Though each of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and TV shows have featured the turtles goofing around with each other and having moments of immaturity and levity in between fights with Shredder, the Foot Clan, and various other villains, none of them have truly tapped into what it's really like being a teenager. That's likely because the movies focus much more on the action and heroics, but digging into the teenage part could open up a whole new can of anchovies.

Seth Rogen is no stranger to teenage comedies, having made major waves as one of the writers of Superbad. Plus, he recently captured the raunchier side of being a middle school aged kid by producing Good Boys. If Rogen and Goldberg can bring the same comedic sensibilities from those movies without getting too vulgar, then we could be looking at the funniest version of the superheroes yet. And since we've seen that they can handle comedy and action thanks to Pineapple Express, that only makes us more confident and excited about what they can do with these characters.

The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie will be directed by Jeff Rowe (Gravity Falls, Connected, Disenchantment) and written by Brendan O'Brien (Neighbors, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates). Ramsey Naito, Executive Vice President of Animation Production and Development, will be overseeing production for Nickelodeon. There's no release date set, but we'll let you know as soon as it's announced.