William Fichtner Confirms Three TMNT Movies

Until now, we’ve only known about one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film being produced by Michael Bay, but today the news slipped that there may be more movies in the works. William Fichtner, set to play the iconic role of The Shredder in this latest iteration of the Ninja Turtles, recently did an interview in which he talked a bit about his part. When pushed about whether or not he would like to come back for possible sequels, which he had hinted at earlier, Fichtner said “I signed a three picture thing, so we’ll see what happens.” This is obviously big news, but what does it actually mean?

Well, the truth is that this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll get any sequels to the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, but it does mean that they’ve planned for it. As Fichtner lays out, if the film does well, there’s a good chance we’ll see the sequels. However, if the film doesn’t do well, they may scrap all of those planned sequels altogether. In the end, it still remains to be seen whether or not there will be three new TMNT movies in our near future. All we really know right now is that they’ve obviously been planning for this to be a blockbuster that they can use to sell a few sequels down the road. When you consider how Hollywood looks at a property such as this nowadays, it shouldn’t be that surprising that they’ve elected to go this route.

Earlier in the interview, Fichtner had some interesting things to say about the film coming out in 2014. At one point he describes the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise as having a “sort of a bouncy, cartoon sort of feel.” Making a distinction between the old and the new, he goes on to say the following:

“That’s not this movie. This movie is live action, Michael Bay is producing it – I’ve worked with Michael a couple of times – that’s a massive commitment to the visual. With Jonathan Liebesman directing, it’s not like any Mutant Ninja Turtles thing you’ve ever seen before. It’s freaky; they’re cool and they’re mutants and they look awesome. Yeah, no it’s tough. It’s going to be really, really great.”

So there you have it, The Shredder has now confirmed that they are mutants and there may be sequels in the works. If the sequels truly are dependent on the success of the first film, then Platinum Dunes and Paramount might not be out of the fire just yet, because they’ve set the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie to release just a week after Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which may have strong ties to last year’s mega blockbuster The Avengers. Sure, this is the TMNT we’re talking about here, but can they stand up to such tough competition? We’ll just have to wait and see. Check out the full interview below. Skip to 11:54 for the bit about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.