Why didn't Mirage ever try Direct-to-DVD movies?
 

I just saw an ad for Marvel Animation's new "Planet Hulk" adaptation and I gotta say, I've always liked the stuff Marvel's animation dept. has put out in recent years and it keeps getting better.

Last year's "Wolverine vs. the Hulk" was geared more toward older fans from what I recall and actually had some bloodshed, as did the old Batman flick "Mask of the Phantasm".

All of this got me to wondering why Mirage never tried a direct-to-DVD movie geared toward the older/comic audience, and not the CG #1 adaptation either. I mean real animation with a harder edge. "Turtles Forever" gave us a glimpse of the Mirage Turtles, but it's nothing compared to what a full-length epic could have been.

I want to see the Turtles stab some baddies kill a Foot soldier or two, dammit! :lol:

Anyhoo, I know this is all for naught since Viacom will never be so cool as to allow something like this to come to light, but still, it would have been neat.

Speculate with me.

Probably because they have no animation studio to do it for them. The original cartoon was produced by Fred Wolf, and 4kids did the 2k3 cartoon, but neither of them would agree to do animation not based on their respective cartoons.

Mirage isn't a very big company. It has like 10 employees, most of whom are gone now. They would have to partner with some new animation studio like Sony or Warner Brothers and pitch a movie idea to them. And of course those studios would never bother to produce one unless they thought it would sell big.

Mirage isn't like Marvel or DC where they can fund animated movies easily. I also doubt Viacom/Nick will produce anything that doesn't fit in with their new CG cartoon.

Yeah I know who Mirage comprised of but seriously, since Eastman was able to get another Heavy Metal anthology rolling it doesn't seem like it wouldn't have been hard for Mirage to license the Turtles to a studio they felt could have did a project like that justice.

Maybe they didn't want to go that direction?

The 2012 movie is supposedly gonna be its own thing yet still from Viacom. Perhaps the series will just be the silly, light-hearted further adventures of those guys... or maybe they're attempting a split universe like Ben 10 did with their Cartoon Network Original live-action movies. Either way, one of the artists had assured us that the movie concept will not change due to the change of hand, but it had to be delayed a year. My point? It seems like Viacom is already doing a movie not based on their series. Whether or not it will be the basis for their series is yet to be evidenced.

They didn't go DTV because they didn't think they'd make a profit off of it.

Same reason they don't do animated comics, either.

Actually Peter mentioned they had a couple of DTV movies planned at various points, but things always fell through.

There was the original comic one, one about Raph as I recall as well.

We never learned much about these sorts of things, but there was probably some ideas similar through the years, but getting these things done aren't always easy.

There was also the DTV prequel for the 2007 movie that fell through. It would have been awesome if it had happened though. Turok, Gen13 and Hellboy got great DTVs based on the comics, just mentioning two examples that weren't DC/Marvel.

With Nick buying the problem is no longer getting money but getting it greenlit is another matter, not to mention Nickelodeon won't put up a dark DTV based on the Mirage comics if we got a DTV it'd be based on the new show, which I'd still be ok with.

Yeah would be awesome but no dice. I would have loved a animated film that tells the story of issue #1. Epic.

Found this thread on Google, I'm surprised we never got one. Small studios have done them and laird could've afforded to make a mirage DTV just the way he wanted with no interference. I wonder why it didn't happen.
I guess it's within the realm of possibility if it still happening with Nick but I'd say it's highly unlikely to ever happen but perhaps.

They almost did a straight up animated adaptation of TMNT Vol. 1, #1. Gary Richardson talked Laird into doing "Turtles Forever" instead.

I'm ok with that change and i hated turtles forever. The hype of the crossover and finally seeing the 87 turtles again was greater than a simple #1 adaptation would've been. Even if the movie sucked, you can't take away the excitement and hype leading up to the movie.

No, sdp. It was a fitting end.

I get it. And was OK with Turtles Forever instead of a #1 adaptation. Now, if it was like a brand new, like, "missing" Vol. 1 story, that'd have excited me. Or an adaptation of the actual Mirage "Return to New York."

While I'd love to see that, I don't think you can just go straight to "Return to New York". There's too much context behind it that it would feel unfinished. I think my ideal movie would be a Vol. 1 trilogy. The first movie could be like 1990 movie, sort of a compressed adaptation of #1, #2, #10, and the Raphael and Leonardo Micros. I'd skip over the stuff that didn't have to do with the Foot, and maybe change April's introduction to be involved with the Foot instead of Baxter to streamline things. Then the second movie could be Northampton and Return to New York, followed by a third movie to adapt City at War. Though City at War is such a big story, you might need two movies, otherwise it might end up being too rushed. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever get anything like that.

Nah, it could have been do-able. Begin with the Turtles at the farm. Flash back to the important parts of #1. Flash back to Shredder torching the 2nd Time Around Store to quickly explain why they're at the farm. Maybe one of the Turtles dreaming about their Triceraton adventure. Bam. We're all caught up.

Well this thread is quite old but I might as well say the obvious anyway:

Mirage Studios was a very small company and is clearly even smaller now, it's practically defunct. The reason they partnered with 4Kids and got funding from Playmates in the first place, is because it was unlikely Mirage alone could fund and produce animated projects. I'm sure they would have just outsourced the animation to some other foreign company but that is still costly, not to mention you might still want to hire storyboarders and editors to work on it domestically. I'm not saying it was impossible but if they tried it, then it might have lead to a very low budget project.

Not that it really matters wheter or not they could have done it, despite TMNT becoming a pop culture icon, I don't think the ambitions for Mirage Studios itself extended beyond publishing comic books.

Yeah. I mean, wasn't the whole joke of it that it was called "Mirage" because it wasn't even a "real" company but just a couple like-minded guys in a room?

I don't think they ever had the means to pursue such ventures even if the interest was there. They'd have had to partner up with someone like WB to produce it, at which point it would become a WB product with them making all the key decisions, thus negating the entire point of the exercise.

They did at the end. Or at many times towards the end. Or even near the middle. They literally had options. If "let's adapt TMNT #1 as a movie, completely independent of any studio or financiers" was something that was on the table -- and we know it was because they told us -- then they could have done a lot.

But. Without proper distribution, which they DIDN'T have -- independently -- it would have largely just been shot into a vacuum. Which honestly even Turtles Forever was. Guaranteed more people know about even TMNT 2007 (which honestly and sadly isn't even that many) than know that Turtles Forever even exist.

That's a good point. And you're right, "Turtles Forever" seems like something most people just plain don't know about. If you just explain the basic concept of it to people, it sounds like the kind of thing that should've been a huge, "Spider-Verse" type of thing that got a lot of attention and did huge business. But you still get a ton of, "Where was I when they made that? I never heard about it."

It definitely should've been a much bigger deal than it is/was. Instead, it's like "Remember when they did a cartoon movie where the cartoon TMNT that everyone remembers teamed up with the cartoon TMNT that nobody remembers? And then when they put it on DVD they cut 10 minutes off it and then never re-released it properly? Awesome." If someone announced a project like that Now you'd expect it to be this huge, heavily-marketed thing. It's crazy that it's such a footnote and that most people who would self-identify as TMNT Fans don't know about it.

Granted, Nick/Viacom could theoretically do more to make people aware of it. BUT, they didn't make it, therefore it's not worth anyone seeing and therefore they're not inclined to make more noise about it. Just like the 4Kids show in general.