Was Viacom the only company offering to buy TMNT?
 

Were there any other companies offering to buy TMNT before Viacom bought it? The closest instance to that happening I know of is when Fred Wolf tried to get the rights through a lawsuit.

God I'm so glad Fred Wolf didn't get the rights to TMNT.

I seriously doubt that was ever a close call. The lawsuit largely happened due to sour relationships, rather than a legitimately broken agreement, and the end credits of each episode clarified that Mirage Studios owned the characters. It's pretty obvious Fred Wolf wouldn't ever get the rights.

Oh yeah, I know that. But still glad that it never happened though.

I know. Imagine that. It's actually really hard, because I really only associate them with the original TMNT show. I guess, all things considered, we got off pretty lucky.

I think I may have heard something about Peter and Kevin almost selling to Marvel in the 90's. Am I crazy?

It's not like Peter or Gary Richardson was actively shopping TMNT around, ever. Viacom just approached them with an offer and Peter said, "Huh. That's a good number. Done."

I confess that after the sale happened, I started to suspect the "25th Anniversary Tour" (reportedly cost $1 million) was designed to put the best shine on the franchise for potential buyers (as there didn't seem to be a whole lot of "what's next?" plans for the franchise as the cartoon and toyline were ending and an Imagi movie sequel seemed dead in the water). I seem to remember that even Murph thought about the idea on one of this old websites, though I doubt he ever bothered to get confirmation on that from Laird.

PL did say another company gave them a bid but he turned them down because it was too low. I wonder who it was.

Considering the sale happened back in 2009, I don't think it was Disney. Back then they had just recently bought Marvel and wouldn't buy Star Wars for another few years. TMNT wouldn't have been a blip on their radar back in 2009. The only other alternative is WB/DC/Time Warner....but I dunno, I don't think WB/DC would be too interested in TMNT enough to purchase it either.

So it was probably just Nick and some minor companies, and Nick offered $60 million and was a big enough company to do major relaunches so it fit.

I know Dark Horse was looking to do some TMNT stuff around the time of the buyout, but I wouldn't expect them to try & actually purchase the TMNT on a whole.

I do know there is/was "bad blood" between Dark Horse and Mirage... but I've never been able to figure out about what, exactly.

Oh, I absolutely agree with this. I am quite sure there were Viacom execs in the room when they gave us the Turtles Forever screening during Comic-Con that year.

I never picked up that it was bad blood, particularly. I think Dark Horse was just interested in doing some TMNT comics, but Peter being Peter, he wasn't gonna let the kids out of the house to go play down the street. It would have been the same response for any other publisher.

Was there? Those snakes in the grass... I should have known...

Yup, unless there's something on the internet to contradict this:

"this sale which was completed on Monday of this week, came out of the blue. I was not actively pursuing selling the property, though Gary (CEO of Mirage) and Fred (my attorney) knew that it was something I might be interested in should the right buyer with the right deal come my way. And then Viacom/MTVN/Nickelodeon showed interest and we started talking." - https://web.archive.org/web/20091026...bout-sale.html

If Dark Horse got the license instead of IDW I wonder what the comic landscape would look like right now. Would they have done their own universe?

Well mate they probably could have done a better job than Haim Saban ended up doing.

Interesting to ponder. Probably yes. Would it be one with the level of Fred Wolfisms as the IDW universe? I don't know. I tend to think no. They might be more apt to put some guys behind it and grow it like a "Hellboy" sort of thing.

IDW as a company is known for making their comics mass market friendly. Same reason they do Transformers, Gi-Joe, My little Pony, Back to the Future, Ducktales, and just recently got the Sonic the Hedgehog license. So naturally they wanted their TMNT to have the most mass market appeal which meant colored bandanas and the characters people would know from their childhood cartoons.

It's also why Viacom decided to partner with them over Dark Horse to begin with, obviously they want the most profit from their license. IDW TMNT has been going on since 2011 and will probably last at least 10 years till 2021, so I think they knew what they were doing.

Post-sale Dark Horse only seemed interested in doing Mirage reprint stuff and not really anything else. As far as I'm aware, other than IDW, BOOM was the only studio that approached Nick about doing new comics.

Hmm, so it was only $60 mill, looking back that seems like a low number. I would not have sold for any less than $100.

What I'm curious is how much Peter paid out to Kevin to buy Kevin's half of the rights back in 2000. If it's significantly less than 30 million (which would be half of what Nick paid Peter for 100% of them in 2009), I bet Kevin is kicking himself now.