The Darkest Ninja Turtles Story Is Becoming a Movie

A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie will adapt one of the darkest Ninja Turtle stories ever — in live-action form.

Word is out that Paramount is now developing a movie based on The Last Ronin, the 2020 comic published by IDW and co-written by Turtles creator Kevin Eastman. The series follows the last surviving Ninja Turtle in a dark future where this “last ronin” sets out to avenge his brothers’ deaths (and Splinter!) by killing Oroku Hiroto, the grandson of the Shredder who has become the leader of New York City. it’s not revealed for a while which of the foursome has survived, so we won’t spoil the surprise if you haven’t read the book.

According to Variety, The Last Ronin movie is going to be a project “for adults” and will be made in live-action, rather than in the animated style of last summer’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

The Last Ronin storyline was based on an idea Eastman originally developed with fellow Turtles co-creator Peter Laird back in the 1980s, but it was only published a few years ago. An immediate hit with fans — it’s one of the best-selling graphic novels of recent years — it has already spawned a prequel (The Lost Years) and a sequel (Re-Evolution). As with all versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there have been toys based on its specific versions of the characters. A video game adaptation is in development as well.

This would be the sixth live-action Ninja Turtles movie. New Line made a trilogy of successful TMNT films in the early 1990s, with animatronic Turtles designed by the Jim Henson Creature Shop. In 2014, Michael Bay produced the first of two rebooted TMNT films, which had motion-captured CGI Turtles alongside a cast of human stars that included Megan Fox and Will Arnett. While widely disliked by fans, Bay’s first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles still grossed nearly half a billion dollars worldwide. The appetite for Ninja Turtles is inexplicably inexhaustible.