Movie News

NBA star J.J. Redick was recently interviewed on the Grantland podcast with Zach Lowe and revealed some interesting information.

He accidentally revealed that the Turtles II film title is going to be “Half Shell”. A snippet of their conversation is below…

J.J. Redick: “Myself, Austin Rivers, Matt Barnes, Spencer Hawes, and DeAndre Jordan … later this afternoon, the five of us, along with five Knicks players are going to be back at MSG and we’re going to be filming a scene for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, Half Shell.”

Zach Lowe: “It’s called Half Shell?”

J.J. Redick: (laughing) “It’s called Half Shell, I probably shouldn’t of said that. I’m gonna get in trouble.”

We recently reported about the cameo and how it will feature five Los Angeles Clippers, but now we’re aware five New York Knicks players will also cameo as well. The NBA action scene was shot on 3/26 so now it’s history. So far this film has really been kept under wraps from the public. Only small, but interesting tidbits have been released. A special kudos to the entire production team on TMNT 2.

Recently Will Arnett and Brazilian model Alessandra Ambrosio filmed a scene for the 2016 Ninja Turtles sequel. They are sitting courtside at a NBA game featuring the New York Knicks vs. the Los Angeles Clippers. The two were spotted kissing at the Knicks game.  Apparently Will Arnett’s character (Vernon Fenwick) has moved on to the Brazilian model after Casey Jones becomes involved with April O’Neil.

The news about the NBA stars appearing in Turtles 2 leaked from ESPN’s Arash Markazi. He reported via his Twitter ” DeAndre Jordan, Matt Barnes, J.J. Redick, Austin Rivers & Spencer Hawes will be filming a scene for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 tomorrow.” Markazi tweeted this news on 3/25. No one is aware why the scene is being shot at Madison Square Garden but director David Green has definitely gotten our attention. Who knows, maybe Michelangelo will rip a dunk?

The first film suffered major scrutiny after its screenplay leaked online, causing a major backlash from Turtles fans around the world. So the entire crew will have to be careful this time around. It’s quite obvious some plot points are completed if shooting has taken place. Stay tuned for more information.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II is slated to begin filming in New York City in April 2015. New Yorkers are excited for the Michael Bay produced sequel to commence production. New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, was quoted as recently of having said:

“We welcome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II to New York City, and look forward to the many jobs this will bring to our local economy.”

The Big Apple can expect to generate approximately $70 million dollars via the film’s shooting in the city that never sleeps. We here at TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles.com are happy for New York City to have, yet, another opportunity to host our guys in green and we look forward to bringing you up to date behind-the-scenes sneak peeks and other previews as they relate to the sequel to the Platinum Dunes/Paramount Studios Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise.

Side Note…

Although we know that we’ll be seeing fan-favorite villains such as “Bebop” and “Rock Steady” in this go-around, no plot information has been released as of today regarding the Turtles sequel. We are certain that we’ll, no doubt, have our eyes glued up on the big screen come 2016 when we think about the possibilities of all the incredible action sequences with the Turtles and Bebop and Rock Steady.

Turtles II will hit theaters in the United States on June 6th, 2016

The film will be directed by Dave Green, the guy behind the hit 2014 animated film Earth To Echo.
Screenwriters from Turtles I, Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec will return to pen the screenplay.

Megan Fox and Will Arnet will return in this next installment, of course, as well.
The question is: What are you looking forward to most regarding the upcoming Turtles film sequel?

It wasn’t too long ago that we announced William Fichtner was going to be playing a character known as Eric Sachs. At the time, the assumption and all reports suggested that Eric Sachs would be Shredder. If you haven’t seen the movie yet and you’re not a fan of spoilers, you might want to stop reading now, because the rest of this article requires a basic understanding of the plot from Jonathan Liebesman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.

For those of us in the know, it’s clear now that Eric Sachs actually isn’t everyone’s favorite bad guy, he’s just a partner/henchman for the Shredder – or at least that’s the impression given by the film. Despite that, some fans have speculated about whether or not Fichtner was ever intended to play Shredhead originally, and he pretty much confirmed this a few months ago.

There were more than a few hints to this origin, including clothing worn by the character of Eric Sachs and the language he uses. Heck, in previous interviews about his role, William Fichtner seemed all too happy to be recognized as playing the role of Shredder, and even confirmed that there were originally plans for at least three movies. A recent interview with the actor was similarly enlightening, albeit for different reasons.

While discussing his recurring role in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, Fichtner was asked about whether or not he felt bad about losing the role of Shredder. He had the following to say about his experiences with the first film:

“Not at all, actually. Without getting into too much detail, I really understood why it might be stronger to separate [Sachs and Shredder]. And I’ve said this a million times, I’m such a producer-friendly guy. Because when we talked about making some changes on the film, and dial it in a little bit better and not go in this direction because we’re going to go in that direction, I ultimately felt it was a better movie. And that’s putting myself out of the equation. I just thought the thought process to separate Shredder from Sachs was a better movie.”

Eric Sachs was originally intended to be Shredder, but this was altered at the last second and he was instead made an associate of Oroku Saki. Was Fichtner right that this decision made for a better movie? Who knows. We haven’t seen what the film was originally intended to be, and it would be difficult for anyone to determine how good it could have been.

Regardless of the possibilities, what we do know is that the film was commercially successful in a variety of markets. As a result of its success, the sequel was greenlit and is scheduled to go into production this April in New York. Fichtner has said that he will be coming back for the second film, but it’s difficult to discern where they will take his character from here. After all, they could change everything up and go in an entirely different direction from here on out, and we could discover that there’s more to Eric Sachs now than there ever was before.

What do you think? Was it a good decision to make Eric Sachs an accomplice instead of the main villain? Let us know in the comments below. Whatever the case may be, we’re excited to see where producers and director Dave Green will take this project. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 is set to be released during the summer of 2016.

Some news broke today regarding the shooting of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2…

Apparently, the film is scheduled to shoot an action sequence in Albany, New York. This was announced on the website Lights-Camera-Jackson.com, which is run by Jackson Murphy, a young and rising movie critic.

Producer of Turtles 2 Andrew Form specified that the filming of Ninja Turtles 2 would take place in New York City. So it seems at this time that Albany may also be used for at least one action sequence for the film. It’s rumored to be a high-octane sequence with a high-speed car chase with guns. Sounds exciting right?

Turtles 2 will be helmed by [director] Dave Green. The word on the street is that Green is great at working with a low budget. So, if he’s working with as big of a budget as we think that Turtles 2 will have–no doubt, he’ll be delivering a fun ride.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) really took a beating from critics when it was released last year as well as great scrutiny regarding it’s “leaked” script. Hopefully, Dave Green will be able to deliver everything the fans want with this next turn of Turtles.

What do you think about this rumor of a scene being shot in Albany, New York? Tell us what you think!