TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES crew talk sequel ideas, plus unused concept art!

While we still have a month to go before we get some half-shell action in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the general consensus about the film is that it ain’t half-bad, but it ain’t half-good either. It’s a decent movie really, but it hardly feels special. Still, it’s raking in some big cash at the box office, which means that a sequel is on the way in 2016. And it looks like that sequel will be paying a visit to Dimension X.

Unlike its far filthier cousin Dimension XXX (Which is where Nick routinely wanders off to), Dimension X might ring a bell in your nostalgic head as the home of the Krang. And I don’t mean just one tentacled brain with a bad attitude in the body of a 1980s wrestler on super-roids and decked out in leftover Kanye West sunglasses.

Dimension X is home to the entire race of Krang, or Utrom from various other TMNT series, with the recent being linked to that species thanks to the mutagen that is responsible for creating the half-shell shinobi reptiles. Speaking to ScreenRant, director Jonathan Liebesman says that the next film would indeed build off of the comic book TCRI easter egg.

And by build off of that, I mean throw viewers into an intergalactic conflict between the Krang and the Triceratons, humanoid Triceratop warriors who happen to be at war with the Krang. “F*ck yes,” Liebesman said when he was asked about the sequel setup. ” I think what we need to do is we need to see how the movie does,” producer Bradley Fuller added. Here’s the rest of the conversation that also includes producer Andrew Form:

Jonathan Liebesman: I would love to. I mean it’s not up to me. It’s up to all of us to decide.

Brad Fuller: But we’ve talked about those worlds already.

Andrew Form: There are scripts that have been written for this movie that integrated those worlds into it already…

Jonathan Liebesman: They were just too…it made the movie a bit too unfocused for this particular story.

I think it’s safe to say that we will be seeing more Turtles, based on recent box office numbers. Here’s a look at the Turtles, as they almost were when CBM interviewed artist Kelton Cram:

They wanted all the Turtles to be unique in shape and size. Tall and skinny to short and stalky to even more brutish.

Because everything was tackled very early on in 3D, there was a lot of work for each change being made that would have to effect all the models and illustrations. Also: the attachment of the shell, and trying to keep the turtles looking strong but able to move and fight at the same time was a bit tricky.

Shredder had a lot of changes throughout the process. The script would have big rewrites, and we completely revisited Shredder’s look and function. I got to spend a lot of time making numerous versions for Shredder.

That Shredder design looks sensible, restrained and not over the top in any way whatsoever. I don’t like it.

Last Updated: August 18, 2014