Director Jeff Rowe has likened Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem to the Academy Award nominated classics Stand by Me and Lady Bird…but with added ninja turtles, of course. Speaking with Empire, who have also unveiled a new image from the animated outing, Rowe has offered further insight into how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem will be “the ultimate teenage coming-of-age film.”
“We wanted it to be like Stand By Me and Lady Bird. But, you know, with Ninja Turtles.”
Set to be played a young cast of new talent, the fact that the mutant ninja turtles are teenagers will play a big part in the plot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. As Jeff Rowe explains it…
“They’ve got a lot of that inauthentic confidence that teenagers have: when you’re a teen, you don’t know any better, so you operate with this hyped-up sense of, ‘We can do anything!’”
Depicting such an accurate take on teenage life is something that producers and co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have done before, with the pair channeling their own teenage experiences into the 2007 hit comedy Superbad. And, according to Rowe, it’s thanks to the involvement of Rogen and Goldberg that this latest iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is so authentic.
“That’s something that [they] are great at. That Superbad thing where they’re best friends, but they’re kinda losers who make fun of each other, but you never doubt for a second that they truly love each other.”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Is Due to Land in Theaters in August
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem picks up with the brothers after years of being sheltered from the humans. Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael set out to win the hearts of the New York people and be accepted as normal teenagers through their heroic acts. The turtles’ new friend April O’Neil also helps them in their acts by having them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon land in trouble when they are confronted by an army of mutants.
Based on the comic book characters created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem acts a reboot for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise and features an all-star cast led by Micah Abbey as Donatello, Nicolas Cantu as Leonardo, Brady Noon as Raphael, Shamon Brown Jr. as Michelangelo, and Ayo Edebiri as April O’Neil. The rest of the cast includes John Cena as Rocksteady, Seth Rogen as Bebop, Giancarlo Esposito as Baxter Stockman, and Jackie Chan as Splinter, as well as appearances from Hannibal Buress, Rose Byrne, Ice Cube, Natasia Demetriou, Post Malone, Paul Rudd, and Maya Rudolph.
Directed by Jeff Rowe in his feature directorial debut and co-directed by Kyler Spears, from a screenplay by Rowe, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Dan Hernandez, and Benji Samit, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem will debut at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 12, 2023.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem will then be released theatrically in the United States on August 4, 2023.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
