Paramount pumps the brakes on Michael Bay produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot

June 15th 2012, 6:04pm

Looks like the “hereos in a half-shell” are getting another lease on life as the production for the reboot of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES has been put on hold in order to fix script issues and lower the budget, pushing the production back by “10 weeks.” This move pushes TMNT off of Paramount’s December 2013 slate and into May 2014.

Seems like Paramount has got some serious issues these days, with the recent shift of G.I. JOE: RETALIATION almost a full year back in order to do reshoots and 3D conversion, as well as reshoots and rewrites for Brad Pitt’s WORLD WAR Z. I’d wager there’s some pretty heated meetings going on at the Paramount lot these days…

Apparantly, Paramount “has halted work on its planned holiday movie for 2013, temporarily laying off preproduction staff and informing those prepping the film that the work stoppage is ‘indefinite.'”

According to Deadline, Paramount is trying to cut the budget for TMNT by $10-20 million for a targeted $125 milion total price tag. The studio initially hired IRON MAN scribes Art Marcum and Matt Holloway to revamp the pic and director Jonathan Liebesman was brought on board to helm our favorite pizza-chompin’ ninjas.

When the project was announced, producer Michael Bay inflamed fans of the TMNT franchise by letting slip that they’d be changing the origin story to give the Turtles an “alien” origin of sorts. We all saw the fallout with that decision, which leaves me wondering if the script rewrites could involve, I don’t know, say, writing OUT that bit of bullshit? I mean, you cut some spaceships and there goes a few million right there, am I right?

I can’t decide if Paramount is making smart moves (cutting costs, punching up scripts BEFORE the movie starts shooting) or if they have completely lost control of their big-budget properties. Perhaps the problems with G.I. JOE: RETALIATION and WORLD WAR Z have led to this decision, which would make sense, as those problematic productions may well have been solved if they began with the end in mind, rather than rushing headlong into a release date.

More as this develops.

Of course, you could have this chick’s problems…