Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Get A Splinter And A Name Change

I’m just going to have to accept that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot is happening after all. There’s no way around it, although I’m still trying to live in denial. The main characters have all been cast, including the four Heroes in the Half-Shell, and their spunky female reporter friend. The most recent news for the Michael Bay-produced reboot though includes Danny Woodburn taking on the role of the Turtles’ mentor and teacher Splinter.

You might not know Woodburn by name, but you likely know him by sight: he’s appeared in Seinfeld and as the dwarf Grimm in Mirror Mirror. Now he will be motion-capturing the hell out of Splinter, the giant rat who educates the teenage turtles in the ways of ninja-dom.

Meanwhile, Alan Ritchson, who is signed on to play Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (apparently they’re not shortening the title to Ninja Turtles after all) has been running around the MTV Movie Awards, defending the film. According to Ritchson, all the assumptions being made about the film online are just wrong:

“You want to tell everybody how great it is, and you can’t really say why, but it is.”

While I do not put a great deal of stock in what an actor has to say about how amazing his next movie is, I admit that perhaps we have all reacted rather strongly to this reboot. There’s no saying that it will not turn out to be a quality entertainment, and a chance for the Turtles to come back in a big way. I am still skeptical, but today at least I do not feel quite as cynical about the reboot as I once was. Like everyone else, I’ll just have to wait and see.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is currently shooting, with Ritchson, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek and Noel Fisher as the Turtles, and Megan Fox in the role of reporter April O’Neil.