Oppenheimer and Barbie may be dominating the box office discussion online this week, but the marketing push for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is also steadily going strong.
Just in, Paramount has released a new featurette, and it has Seth Rogen emphasizing just how necessary it was to cast actual teens to play the TMNT for the first time in their cinematic history. Watch this:
“I grew up watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the ‘teenage’ part was always the most underexplored part,” says Rogen, “I always thought it would be really interesting to explore them in that way, especially because from my understanding, every version of them has been performed by adults.”
Though the film has managed to nab some A-list actors for the cast including Jackie Chan, Paul Rudd, and Ice Cube, the Turtles are played by mostly newcomers Nicolas Cantu (Leo), Sharon Brown Jr. (Mikey), Brady Noon (Raph), and Micah Abbey (Donnie).
It’s actually interesting how the actors’ chemistry actually informed the characterization of the Turtles, and even the showrunners would allow them to use all the new slang that kids have been using around the internet (like the word ‘rizz’).
While pop-culture references have a tendency to age over time, I always like the idea of the Turtles getting rebooted every generation to represent a new batch of kids. I guess this TMNT is going to be for Generation Alpha.
Watch out for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem when it comes to theaters on Aug. 2.
