‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Sequel Could Feature Casey Jones And Dimension X

By Russ Fischer/Aug. 13, 2014 4:00 pm EST

Read quotes on all that below, and see some concept art for Turtle designs that didn’t make the cut for this first film.

Let’s start with sequel stuff.

Screenrant asked Liebesman, Form and Fuller about going “big and sci-fi.” The answer was an excited “yes!” After posing the question, Liebesman queried, “Dimension X?” then said “F*ck yes.” But Fuller was more cautious, saying “I think what we need to do is we need to see how the movie does.”

That said, Fuller mentioned “we’ve talked about those worlds already.” And this little exchange followed:

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

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

Quick backstory about Dimension X. In various TMNT stories, that’s the origin of the TCRI ooze that transforms the turtles and Splinter into humanoids. It’s also the home of the alien villain Krang, and leads to some weird stories featuring other aliens, such as the Triceratons. 

In the same interview with Screenrant, the creators said, 

Liebesman: Casey Jones.

Form: Casey Jones. Bebop and Rocksteady. We had those conversations throughout development of this movie but we’re launching this movie now in two weeks. Hopefully everybody feels the same way we do [about it]. We love them [Bebop and Rocksteady].

Digest all that while you think about this. Not only did some of the Dimension X elements factor into early scripts for the film that was released earlier this month, there were elements of the film that were changed considerably during reshoots. Da7e at Latino Review says,

For more on changes that were made during production, let’s go to CBM, which has an interview with concept artist Kelton Cram. Cram says,

Cram has a lot more to say about the design process for the film, adding,

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

Obviously that’s not quite how things worked out, as we know from the final designs. But here are some images provided by Cram:

Jonathan Liebesman had a lot of the ideas in his head about the different personalities of each Turtle, and how that would determine the size, costume, and accessories. It was all based on the original TMNT, but with a more cinematic approach. Donnie, the brain with the gadgets, Mikey the surfer, Leo the traditional one, and of course Raph the rebel. … They wanted all the Turtles to be unique in shape and size. Tall and skinny to short and stalky to even more brutish.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 will be released on June 3, 2016. Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form will produce, while Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec will return as writers.