I’m going to level with you, pizza pals: Paramount most likely planned to make a sequel to the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (Heather’s review) from the moment they hired Michael Bay to snort lines off the script. Pretty much no one spends $100 million on a movie without franchise plans anymore. So while it sounds somewhat shocking and premature and terrible that they’re announcing a sequel four days after the release of the first installment that no one seemed to like much, the fact that they are confirming it now just means the movie wasn’t a Battleship/John Carter-level investor’s disaster. Instantly-greenlit sequels to poorly-received films are barely even news anymore, and that is depressing.
Paramount Pictures was so pleased by “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’s” $93.7 million global debut this weekend that it said it is moving forward with plans for a sequel to the franchise reboot. […]
Part two will land in theaters on June 3, 2016, with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes returning again as a producer and screenwriters Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec (“Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol”) coming back as screenwriters. [Variety]
Of course they’re making a sequel. They made $93 million on this one using Michael Bay’s third-string understudy (Jonathan Liebesman) to direct, who went on to make a film even more poorly-reviewed (19% on RT) than his last two horribly reviewed films – Wrath of the Titans (25%) and Battle: Los Angeles (35%). By the way, I saw Battle: Los Angeles and 35% is a miracle. Every thing about TMNT screams “content doesn’t matter.” Point being, I understand them making a sequel, but not the part where they bring back any of the creative team. At this point, they could just get Michael Bay drunk on marshmallow Ciroc and hire the first person he hits with his Lamborghini to direct. They’d probably do a better job than Jonathan Liebesman, just by simple probability.