How do you do fellow teenagers

“Teleport to us five overbearing and overemotional individuals.”…wait, wrong franchise. For a while, there has been a part of the title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that has gone somewhat ignored when it comes to adaptations. The teenage aspect. Producer Seth Rogen has now said he aims to correct this in his new TMNT movie.

Earlier this year it was announced that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg would be producing a new CGI animated TMNT movie. With Jeff Lowe attached to direct and a script by Brenden O’Brian. Which will be the 7th TMNT movie, and only the second done in CGI.

Recently Rogen sat down with Collider to give an interview. He gave some insight on what we can expect to see from this new version. During the interview Rogen had this to say.

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.”

Collider Interview

Teenagers Who Don’t Teenage

Rogen isn’t wrong about the teenage part. To date, there have been six movies and four television shows based around the property. Few of them have actually done anything to explore the fact that turtles are adolescents. In most movies; and both the 87 and 2000’s cartoons the turtles feel far more like adults than teenagers. Only Nickelodeon’s 2021 TMNT and the recent Rise of the Ninja Turtles have truly tried to explore the fact the turtles are teenagers.

Considering Rogen’s work in movies like Superbad, and his experience in the realm of animation with the Kung Fu Panda series. It will be interesting to see what Rogen’s Teenage focused Turtles movie ends up looking like.