If you were a die-hard fan of the Ninja Turtles, then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows was aimed squarely at you. It was a better movie than the original in terms of hitting all of the nostalgia points, but at the box office it totally bombed. The first movie earned $493M worldwide in 2014, while the sequel only hit $245M. And apparently those numbers aren't going to cut it for Paramount, as producer Andrew Form tells Collider the chances for a third movie are slim.
When asked about a TMNT 3, Form was bluntly honest in his assessment...
"I don’t think there’s Turtles 3, but I wouldn’t say there’s never going to be another Turtles movie."
He's definitely right about that last part. There will be more TMNT flicks, but we may see some kind of reboot in a few years.
Form talked about how he and others on the project were surprised at how the movie under-performed compared to its predecessor, thinking they had made a superior film. But when asked why he thinks it failed, Form has a few ideas...
"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....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. It just didn’t find an audience."
This isn't the last we've seen of the TMNT, but if they do come back I hope there's an effort to stick close to the source material right from the beginning. If 'Out of the Shadows' had come first I think we would be talking about a franchise that is still going strong.
