“When you see this movie, kids will believe one day that these turtles do exist, when we’re done with this movie. These turtles are from an alien race, and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny and completely loveable.” That’s Michael Bay talking at the Nickelodeon Upfront about the forthcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. First of all, they wouldn’t actually change the name (and risk losing all that sweet built-in recognition). Second of all, it seems clear that Bay’s primary concern with the movie is making children believe that turtles are a real thing. Did killing their class pet “Slow-y” last year not hammer it home enough for them? Of course, the eyebrow-raising note here is that the turtles of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird‘s warped minds aren’t aliens. They’re turtles. From here on Earth. Where turtles live. Maybe it’s a simple matter of misspeaking, but if Bay and company are really planning to make Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael beings from another planet, this is a serious and pointless change to the core of the characters. This could be seen as impotent fan ranting, and it might be if their origin weren’t so central to the story here. It just seems like a needless change (and one that makes no zoological or rational sense to boot). What we really need to know: are their also rats on this alien planet?

Legendary Pictures is rebooting the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise in 2011. We also now have this photo that may or may not have something to do with the production. Should make for an interesting discussion, though.

Not before, not since, and, I imagine, never again, will a film come into my life the way Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did. It arrived at exactly the perfect time in my life, and, as such, deserves a place among the Movies We Love.

Paramount and Nickelodeon have Turtle Power. In a big $60 million dollar acquisition deal — as reported today by Variety — Viacom has acquired the rights to one of the most successful television/film/toy/comic franchises of all-time.

Of the two creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one (Kevin Eastman) has come out and said it will be a live-action film like the first three films, prompting the other (Peter Laird) to say “not so fast.”