Your most mourned undeveloped projects

[ToTheNines]

Which projects damned to development hell do you most want to see? I’ll go first.

Mirage: there’s a handful of stuff that The Sale killed. Sourcebooks are usually lame and aimed at casuals, but I really wish we could have seen what Tristan had put together for his.

Marvel and Mirage were in talks for a crossover around this time too. It probably wouldn’t have been very good, but the fact that Daredevil and TMNT have never crossed over is a little crazy.

Image: not actually Image, but around the time Andrew and Arseniy’s #25 came out, Tristan was developing Vol. 3 #0. It wouldn’t have been a Gang Wars conclusion, but it would have dealt with the aftermath and answered some questions. And obviously led into the beginning of the Image run.

Fred Wolf: I have always lamented the lack of a Christmas special for this show. Lo and behold, at some point roughly around season 6, Peter was trying to wrangle some control back in the animation department and commissioned Michael Charles Hill to script a 1 hour Christmas special titled “Miracle on Interstate 91”. Would have loved to see that and would still pay a pretty penny to get ahold of a copy of that script if one ever pops up again.

Archie: There’s the obvious answer, but that worked out for the best, eventually. I do wish Murphy kept working on Ninjara/Seeds of Destruction… perhaps somewhere other than Furrlough lol. But I think there are plans for that, too.

Toys: Too many to list, I’ll have to think about this one.

Film: Definitely the Hallmark TV series. Would love for some scripts to be unearthed.

Not technically “film”, but I absolutely wish Next Mutation got its second season. Would have been fun.

Even though I’ve grown to dislike the 2007 movie, I wish they were able to turn the sequel around quickly for an ‘09 release just so there was a little more to that version.

I say this all the time, but I wish The Blue Door was the movie we got instead of 2014.

4kids: A second season of FF definitely would have been preferable to BttS. They still could have ended the show with Casey and April’s wedding.

2012: I don’t know that it’s ever been seriously developed in any way, but Ciro repeatedly mentioning his idea for the Kraang Primordius movie kills me.


That’s all I got off the top of my head. Am I forgetting any big ones?

[Daytona]

The Last Ronin movie - I still think we’ll get it in some form but the push for an r-rated TMNT theatrical TMNT movie coming soon blew my mind.

The Mirage backed anniversary adaptation of the first issue. Pretty sure this was about to happen right before the Viacom sale.

The Epstein Files - total nonsense full of claims like Biden is a clone, primarily used as a low IQ source for people who think counting the times someone’s name is mentioned for any reason whatsoever is some form of proof.

[ToTheNines]

The Mirage backed anniversary adaptation of the first issue. Pretty sure this was about to happen right before the Viacom sale.

Unfortunately Murphy’s blog is mostly lost to the sands of time, so I have to go off memory here.

But as I remember it, that was tentatively being planned as a special DTV “movie” (runtime of 45 min to an hour) for the 25th anniversary. It was only cancelled because 4kids convinced Peter to move forward with Turtles Forever.

Also they were going to use Imagi and their character models, so them going out of business surely helped kill this one.

[CyberCubed]

Other than not getting The Forever War back in 1995 like it was originally supposed to come out, nothing really. Image got its ending 30 years later so I don't care about it being canceled now.

The second FF season was only going to be 10 episodes, and while I like the idea for some of the episodes like Space Usagi showing up, Ch'rell appearing here would have obviously caused his return in Turtles Forever not to happen (he was going to become the Triceraton Shredder), so I prefer the latter.

[sdp]

Easy for me it's Ninja Turtles The Next Mutation Season 2 which I've written about many times (https://miscrave.com/articles/ninja-turtles-next-mutation-season-2/), can you imagine Casey or April appearing? Saban kit bashing some Power Rangers monsters into mutant villains? Shredder returining as the bad guy. I was the target audience and still a kid I would've been all over it, I loved TMNT and I loved Power Rangers "cheesy fights'.

The TMNT 2007 sequel which i'm sure you've seen videos about the FAKE sequel that some youtubers make from the Imagi poster they made which Imagi stated was FAKE and more of a gift, the actual plans we did know were that it'd be more comedy based, but since the movie didn't reach 100m domestically it never happened. As flawed as the 2007 movie was I loved that era so much, it felt "fresh and new".

2014 TMNT 3 This was never in production I guess but some of ToTheNines choices also aren't so it's fair game. Yeah, not my favorite universe but they had already established a live action movie verse were they basically had mutant creatures, rocksteady, bebop etc and it made sense. It's a sin that we didn't get a third movie that would've literally been a "Mutant Mayhem" in live action. We'll never get that possibility again, and I wouldn't want that, I only wanted it as a third movie since I didn't care if that universe kept digging its hole into WTF are they thinking.

TMNT #1 Direct to Video movie - Already mentioned here but while I loved we got Turtles Forever (despite not liking the movie), It's a shame we never got that adaptation of TMNT #1 in animation. It likely would've aged better than TF, but no hate seeing the first crossover was something special and it felt like a send off to not only the 4Kids turtles, the 87 turtles but also Mirage now in hindsight. I still think the adaptation of #1 is going to happen one day...one day.

Toys:
Don't know if these count but remember that SDCC exclusive Shadow Leonardo statue they sold? It was a shame they never sold those with actual articulation and all turtles. I woudl've been all over.
Hell remember before the 2012 toyline came out they sold some better painted figures to the press or something? Much better quality than the retail ones? Those!

TMNT 2002 KidsWB
: While 2k3 was likely the better deal, I would've loved it either as 3D cg or 2D which the pilot is 3D but we saw the 2D sketches. They looked very mirage and had a cute April. I can see those turtles would've had fun adventures in their episodes.

surprised no one has mentioned Volume 4 conclusion

.

Fred Wolf: I have always lamented the lack of a Christmas special for this show. Lo and behold, at some point roughly around season 6, Peter was trying to wrangle some control back in the animation department and commissioned Michael Charles Hill to script a 1 hour Christmas special titled “Miracle on Interstate 91”. Would have loved to see that and would still pay a pretty penny to get ahold of a copy of that script if one ever pops up again.
Didn't know about this one, I know we've discussed the lack of a xmas episdoe on the drome before, it would've been a great episode.


4kids: A second season of FF definitely would have been preferable to BttS. They still could have ended the show with Casey and April’s wedding.
I would've loved to have had the planned second season of FF but not as the final season, I liked BTTS and going back to the present. Now we do know they had the Shredder Wars planned; I would've loved to see that.



Other than not getting The Forever War back in 1995 like it was originally supposed to come out, nothing really.
I'm sure the Forever War in 1995 would've been much much different, also the one that was planned for the mid 2000s would've also been very different to the one that actually came out, wait one came out right?



Image got its ending 30 years later so I don't care about it being canceled now.

Are you talking about the fan ending Andrew gave it or didn't idw make an official one also ?

[Daytona]

Unfortunately Murphy’s blog is mostly lost to the sands of time, so I have to go off memory here.

But as I remember it, that was tentatively being planned as a special DTV “movie” (runtime of 45 min to an hour) for the 25th anniversary. It was only cancelled because 4kids convinced Peter to move forward with Turtles Forever.

Also they were going to use Imagi and their character models, so them going out of business surely helped kill this one.

It’s all coming back to me. Good memory you have.

I also want to add the original vision for whatever platinum dunes was gonna be before they chickened out, added fart jokes, abandoned fight scenes, recast Shredder, and dropped the alien reinvention.

Now, I know most of those changes are popular with the fans, at least in theory, but in hindsight the turtles being aliens would have been the least of that movies problems.

Kevin Eastman gets a lot of crap for trying to sell fans on this movie but I genuinely believe he was under the impression they were making something great. They probably showed him the insane effects, told him they were taking inspiration from “Souls Winter”, showed him some of the fight choreography they were cooking up, and blew him away, before panicking and reworking the entire thing.

It’s not my ideal concept for the TMNT but it was a bold vision and probably would have had a more serious tone and sense of drama. And if nothing else it would have been interesting to see, in case I sound crazy.


Back to the alien thing, it doesn’t even bother me anymore. The turtles have past lives in the IDW book and it’s a great new spin on the origin. If they had turned them into straight up aliens while still incorporating the Saki and Yoshi backstory, you could count me in.

The only red flag to me is “General Schrader” or whatever, holy ****. I guess that negates the saki and Yoshi backstory unfortunately.

[CyberCubed]

A lot of this stuff listed was just stuff or ideas tossed around, most of this stuff never went into production. There's obviously a whole bunch of TMNT pitches that never got made (we know Nick had a ton of them pitched by different directors and that's how we got the 2012 series from Ciro and then Rise of the TMNT). The sequel to the 2007 movie never went into production, that poster they made was just an idea they had for a sequel, so we never lost anything.

The only things that were outright canceled was Archie's Forever War and the planned second season of Fast Forward. They even have the full voice work of "Master Fighter 2105" from the first ep of the second season.

I don't see the point of going on about "what ifs" when you can say that for anything.

[neatoman]

Well, let's see, there is the Ruby-Spears Mutanimals show but I'm not I really care that it never got made.

[ToTheNines]

The second FF season was only going to be 10 episodes, and while I like the idea for some of the episodes like Space Usagi showing up, Ch'rell appearing here would have obviously caused his return in Turtles Forever not to happen (he was going to become the Triceraton Shredder), so I prefer the latter.

Good point. That probably worked out for the best.

Easy for me it's Ninja Turtles The Next Mutation Season 2 which I've written about many times (https://miscrave.com/articles/ninja-turtles-next-mutation-season-2/), can you imagine Casey or April appearing? Saban kit bashing some Power Rangers monsters into mutant villains? Shredder returining as the bad guy. I was the target audience and still a kid I would've been all over it, I loved TMNT and I loved Power Rangers "cheesy fights'.

Cool write up, thanks for sharing.

The TMNT 2007 sequel which i'm sure you've seen videos about the FAKE sequel that some youtubers make from the Imagi poster they made which Imagi stated was FAKE and more of a gift, the actual plans we did know were that it'd be more comedy based, but since the movie didn't reach 100m domestically it never happened. As flawed as the 2007 movie was I loved that era so much, it felt "fresh and new".

Yeah as a fanboy balls deep into it, it was certainly an exiting time and felt like a new beginning as the 4kids show was in its twilight.

But looking back? It didn’t even move the needle of cultural significance. TMNT returning to the theaters should have been a big deal and they probably should have had a live action movie ready to go while 4kids was still in season 2 or 3.

But being animated and waiting so long was only the beginning of the list of things they did wrong.

2014 TMNT 3 This was never in production I guess but some of ToTheNines choices also aren't so it's fair game. Yeah, not my favorite universe but they had already established a live action movie verse were they basically had mutant creatures, rocksteady, bebop etc and it made sense. It's a sin that we didn't get a third movie that would've literally been a "Mutant Mayhem" in live action. We'll never get that possibility again, and I wouldn't want that, I only wanted it as a third movie since I didn't care if that universe kept digging its hole into WTF are they thinking.

This is an interesting one.

Let’s hypothetically imagine this was real, it would have likely dropped in 2018 or 2019. Which was already a flop era for Turtles lol. Right in the middle of Rise and just before the Sophie run. Why not throw a ****** threequel in there?


TMNT 2002 KidsWB
: While 2k3 was likely the better deal, I would've loved it either as 3D cg or 2D which the pilot is 3D but we saw the 2D sketches. They looked very mirage and had a cute April. I can see those turtles would've had fun adventures in their episodes.

Were those the same project? I thought they were unrelated for some reason. I love that ****** Reboot lookin CGI of that era and would have loved this show if it had come out, for sure.

surprised no one has mentioned Volume 4 conclusion

That technically doesn’t qualify. They quit regular publication is 2006 (20 ****ing years now, sweet Jesus) and then it just petered out after that. Yes pun intended.

Anyway, let’s just wait for Journeys #33. Don’t Stop Believin’!

I would've loved to have had the planned second season of FF but not as the final season, I liked BTTS and going back to the present. Now we do know they had the Shredder Wars planned; I would've loved to see that.

I don’t think Shredder Wars was ever a real thing. They just wanted some crazy broken timeline for their season opener and it was a cool way to introduce Cyber Shredder.

And if it was real, it makes no sense. Why the hell would Ch’rell and Cyber Shredder be at odds? They’re the same person with the same goals. No reason to not be on the same side.

I'm sure the Forever War in 1995 would've been much much different, also the one that was planned for the mid 2000s would've also been very different to the one that actually came out, wait one came out right?

Yes, in 2024.

https://turtlesclub.net/#rec840565112

FMDTvRRMar4?is=Yd_l-6f87_66kJQt

Are you talking about the fan ending Andrew gave it or didn't idw make an official one also ?

Andrew’s 2-parter, now known as “Unfinished Business” was about 13 years after the last issue of Image.

Then IDW did Urban Legends #24-26 in 2020 with Carlson and Fosco, so I think he’s talking about that. fwiw I think Andrew’s comic is waaaay better. But Urban Legends was fun too.

It’s all coming back to me. Good memory you have.

I also want to add the original vision for whatever platinum dunes was gonna be before they chickened out, added fart jokes, abandoned fight scenes, recast Shredder, and dropped the alien reinvention.

Now, I know most of those changes are popular with the fans, at least in theory, but in hindsight the turtles being aliens would have been the least of that movies problems.

Kevin Eastman gets a lot of crap for trying to sell fans on this movie but I genuinely believe he was under the impression they were making something great. They probably showed him the insane effects, told him they were taking inspiration from “Souls Winter”, showed him some of the fight choreography they were cooking up, and blew him away, before panicking and reworking the entire thing.

It’s not my ideal concept for the TMNT but it was a bold vision and probably would have had a more serious tone and sense of drama. And if nothing else it would have been interesting to see, in case I sound crazy.


Back to the alien thing, it doesn’t even bother me anymore. The turtles have past lives in the IDW book and it’s a great new spin on the origin. If they had turned them into straight up aliens while still incorporating the Saki and Yoshi backstory, you could count me in.

The only red flag to me is “General Schrader” or whatever, holy ****. I guess that negates the saki and Yoshi backstory unfortunately.

Yeah, Colonel Schrader was absolutely brain dead as concept and the main dealbreaker for me. Still probably better than the original Eric Sachs as white Shredder idea. Or equally lol

But I think you’re on to something with Eastman there. I heard one of the producers of the 1990 movie say in an interview that Eastman gave some people at Platinum Dunes “a piece of his mind” in reaction to the 2014 movie.

Seemed odd when he said that, but the way you framed it here it definitely makes sense.

A lot of this stuff listed was just stuff or ideas tossed around, most of this stuff never went into production. There's obviously a whole bunch of TMNT pitches that never got made (we know Nick had a ton of them pitched by different directors and that's how we got the 2012 series from Ciro and then Rise of the TMNT). The sequel to the 2007 movie never went into production, that poster they made was just an idea they had for a sequel, so we never lost anything.

The only things that were outright canceled was Archie's Forever War and the planned second season of Fast Forward. They even have the full voice work of "Master Fighter 2105" from the first ep of the second season.

I don't see the point of going on about "what ifs" when you can say that for anything.

Most of the stuff listed here made it to the scripting level. And what’s the point of going on about anything on a dying TMNT message board?

[Daytona]

I’d like to see that interview if you ever stumble upon it again. Out of all TMNT projects, that’s the only one I’ve heard him even allude to not liking. In recent years he’s definitely hinted that he thinks it’s a bit of a stinker. You don’t hear him do that with anything else so it wouldn’t surprise me if he felt burned.

[sdp]

G
But looking back? It didn’t even move the needle of cultural significance. TMNT returning to the theaters should have been a big deal and they probably should have had a live action movie ready to go while 4kids was still in season 2 or 3.
It was too early in the nostalgia cycle I guess, just shows how evergreen TMTN was that 2k3 still survived.
As far as TMNT 2007 yeah it doesn't seem to have much cultural impact anymore but at the time it sort of did. Fast Forward toys didn't sell but the 2007 sold really well, which is also the reason FF s2 got cancelled in favor of BTTS with designs that resembled the movie.




Were those the same project? I thought they were unrelated for some reason. I love that ****** Reboot lookin CGI of that era and would have loved this show if it had come out, for sure.
I think you're right but the character designs are clearly the same, so it seems they just re-used them to pitch it again but this time in 2D/3D whatever came second.


I don’t think Shredder Wars was ever a real thing. They just wanted some crazy broken timeline for their season opener and it was a cool way to introduce Cyber Shredder.
And if it was real, it makes no sense. Why the hell would Ch’rell and Cyber Shredder be at odds? They’re the same person with the same goals. No reason to not be on the same side.
Cubed might know more about this, he was the one always saying we were missing the Shredder Wars to be concluded. I always debated with him that it was a throwaway line, but one day the offical TMNT4kids account on the technodrome eventually revealed that there were indeed plans for the Shredder Wars, so I stopped saying it was not a thing after that lol

[ToTheNines]

I’d like to see that interview if you ever stumble upon it again. Out of all TMNT projects, that’s the only one I’ve heard him even allude to not liking. In recent years he’s definitely hinted that he thinks it’s a bit of a stinker. You don’t hear him do that with anything else so it wouldn’t surprise me if he felt burned.

nutFQsMxAMM?is=KHvtvthJ0SYQSeQG

It was too early in the nostalgia cycle I guess, just shows how evergreen TMTN was that 2k3 still survived.
As far as TMNT 2007 yeah it doesn't seem to have much cultural impact anymore but at the time it sort of did. Fast Forward toys didn't sell but the 2007 sold really well, which is also the reason FF s2 got cancelled in favor of BTTS with designs that resembled the movie.

Oh really? I always assumed they were just trying to streamline tne toy line into one uniform look because they were on their last leg.

[d_osborn]

My biggie is the pre-Nick buyout film that was being written by John Fusco.

The Barron Hallmark mini-series is a close second, just out of sheer curiosity.

They probably showed him the insane effects, told him they were taking inspiration from “Souls Winter”, showed him some of the fight choreography they were cooking up, and blew him away, before panicking and reworking the entire thing.


Is the Souls Winter comparison confirmed in an interview? First I've heard that they described it like that.

[ToTheNines]

It was too early in the nostalgia cycle I guess, just shows how evergreen TMTN was that 2k3 still survived.

Well this was the same year Transformers dropped. But that was a big budget popcorn movie with great special effects and a female lead that everyone was gooning to at the time.

Pretty hilarious that the lesson was to try to copy this movie bar for bar 7 years later, without any meaningful adherence to their own source material (Mirage nor the FW cartoon).

[d_osborn]

It would be great if more scripts would surface from the 2014 movie deveopment. What hit screens was a hacked up mess. What did the script that made Paramount greenlight production look like?

I really need to reread The Blue Door. With work, it could've been better. Nix the TMNT as alien stuff. rework Schrader/Shredder character, add some martial arts mysticism and the Foot, maybe in the vein of Big Trouble in Little China. From memory, I liked the road trip stuff. I liked the pacing and structure.

[Daytona]

My biggie is the pre-Nick buyout film that was being written by John Fusco.

The Barron Hallmark mini-series is a close second, just out of sheer curiosity.



Is the Souls Winter comparison confirmed in an interview? First I've heard that they described it like that.

Thanks for video, ToTheNines.

I’m pretty sure something was mentioned about Souls Winter being an inspiration at one point but I can’t recall where. I’ll see if I can find it.

[d_osborn]

I’m pretty sure something was mentioned about Souls Winter being an inspiration at one point but I can’t recall where. I’ll see if I can find it.
Thanks! Souls Winter is one of my fav alternate iterations. At least visually.

[ToTheNines]

That old thread about reprints sdp bumped in the comics section made me think of this, but one of the most frustrating cancelled things for me is the old Mirage Collected Books series. The TPBs with the stunning AC Farley covers, typically 3 issues each. I really wish they would have kept that going for the rest of Vol. 1.

Not only would it have been a great way to collect all of Mirage with nothing skipped, but we'd have at least 8 more wraparound covers that looked like this:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e2/ce/7f/e2ce7f7a8fad935801d7931dc7313d55--teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles.jpg

[Heyowakka]

The coloring in those trades were beautiful too.

[ToTheNines]

The coloring in those trades were beautiful too.

These were all black and white. I think you’re thinking of the First Comics TPBs:

https://marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-graphic-novel-set-2.jpg

These were nice too! I wish they had gone on also. Even as far as they got, they skipped every Micro except Leonardo #1 and I wish they hadn’t. “Kirby and the Warp Crystal” and “The Christmas Aliens” could have looked nice in color.

[Heyowakka]

Ah! My mistake, I got the old paperbacks mixed up!

[neatoman]

Oh yeah, and the sequel to the 2007 I guess. Not that I care that much either but the 2007 movie is the one to almost get the tone right, maybe producers would have learned a lesson if a sequel was made?

[ToTheNines]

It would be great if more scripts would surface from the 2014 movie deveopment. What hit screens was a hacked up mess. What did the script that made Paramount greenlight production look like?

I really need to reread The Blue Door. With work, it could've been better. Nix the TMNT as alien stuff. rework Schrader/Shredder character, add some martial arts mysticism and the Foot, maybe in the vein of Big Trouble in Little China. From memory, I liked the road trip stuff. I liked the pacing and structure.

This video is a good summary of it if you don't feel like reading the whole thing:

-B34bV3bIdc

Oh yeah, and the sequel to the 2007 I guess. Not that I care that much either but the 2007 movie is the one to almost get the tone right, maybe producers would have learned a lesson if a sequel was made?

Yeah, maybe.

I've heard Munroe talk about his idea for the story. Basically he was going to have Mikey join the Foot Clan because his brothers didn't take him seriously. He was going to be off in Japan doing his own this for most of the movie while everyone else was dealing with the return of the Shredder in NYC. The third act would have been about him coming home and helping turn the tide against Shredder and more or less saving the day.

Kind of funny that he would have almost definitely had a black mask. I wonder how that would have effected the development of The Last Ronin, if it wasn't Butterfly Effected out of existence in this hypothetical reality.

[CyberCubed]

I found this out recently, there was actually going to be another Tournament Fighters game for the Gameboy (coming out the same time as the NES, SNES and Genesis versions), and that one would have Michelangelo on the cover (notice how each of the 3 had a different Turtle on the cover). It was canceled though.

I'm interested to see how they would have pulled off an old black and white Gameboy TMNT fighting game. They had Gameboy ports of Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct on Gameboy, so I could have seen them doing a Gameboy Tournament Fighters. Would have been an interesting curiosity at the least.