Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz share their thoughts (and optimism) on the future of the live-action, R-rated film.
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| Cover art of 'The Last Ronin'. | Credit: IDW Publishing |
Last November, Paramount's live-action, R-rated movie adaptation of The Last Ronin comics, a darker alternate future for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, went back on the shelf for the time being. The news broke the hearts of the rabid fans eager to see a more brutalist Michelangelo on a vengeance mission on the big screen.
However, if you ask two of the chief architects of the "Roninverse," Kevin Eastman and Tom Waltz, hope abounds. "I don't think the movie's off the table," Eastman told Entertainment Weekly. "I think it's just delayed."
Eastman, who co-created The Last Ronin comics with Peter Laird, spoke to EW during an interview with his co-writer, Waltz, to announce the arrival of a Training Day prequel comic centered around the characters of Mikey and Casey Marie Jones. Skydance Media recently acquired Paramount, the Hollywood home of the Turtles, and Eastman acknowledges the franchise is in a transitional period at the moment.
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| Kevin Eastman. | IDW Publishing |
"Speaking with all the folks at Viacom and Paramount and Nickelodeon who love the Turtles and really have done a fantastic job, whether it be the 2012 series to Mutant Mayhem, I don't think it will not happen," Eastman continues. "I think it will happen. One of the things that anybody I've talked to at the companies, they know the fans love and support all things Last Ronin, as much as another group of fans love everything Point Grey [Pictures, production company], Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and everybody has done with the whole Mutant Mayhem series. We're not disheartened at all."
The Last Ronin, which began in 2020 through IDW Publishing, introduced a reality in which Michelangelo was the last surviving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a.k.a. the titular Last Ronin. He sets out on a mission to avenge the deaths of Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello by taking out their killer, the grandson of Shredder and the new leader of the Foot Clan.
The comics continued with The Last Ronin: The Lost Years, which was part prequel and part sequel that showed how Mikey became the Last Ronin and the rise of a new group of Turtles. The latter — Odyn, Moja, Uno, and Yi — then became the stars of their own comics, The Last Ronin II — Re-Evolution. Casey Marie Jones, the daughter of April O'Neil and Casey Jones, became their sensei.
Now, ahead of a Part 3 installment, which was teased at the end of Re-Evolution, Training Day will go back in time to show Mikey training Casey.
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| Art for 'The Last Ronin — Training Day'. | IDW Dark |
Actress Judith Hoag, known for playing Hollywood's first live-action April O'Neil, revealed she had "been approached" to appear in the Last Ronin movie before it stalled.
When it comes to the movie adaptation, Waltz considers himself an optimist. "It kind of goes back to timing," he says. "Let's say, if the movie happened now, Training Day hasn't happened yet...We won't be like George R. R. Martin, where the other media is ahead of us. So we can tell this complete story now, have it done. Training Day is better because of the experience we've already had. So now I think the movie can only be better because now there's more data. There's more to choose from. Maybe you can put that Training Day sequence into the movie. It wouldn't have existed before, or it wouldn't have been ours."
Waltz also considers the current state of the economy. "At this big macro level for these big businesses, I think they're kind of waiting to see, too, which way the tide goes," he continues. "But I'm always an optimist, and I think things will start to improve, and I think that's when things start to move. But I just look at it as we get a chance to control what we control, which is the comics and the core story, and then the movie's just that much better for it."
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H/T: Total Film.
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