The Big Picture

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
pushes the franchise in new directions through a fresh storyline.
The showrunners focus on teenage aspects with the new series, honoring the past while creating something unique.
The series separates the turtles, allowing them to grow individually and challenging them to survive and discover new aspects of themselves.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a mainstay of pop culture for over 40 years. Following the adventures of Leo, Donnie, Raph, and Mikey, the heroes in a half-shell must fight various foes while remaining hidden from a world that fears them. At least, that’s how the story started; after the events of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the status quo has changed in new and exciting ways.

In the sequel series, Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we see life has changed for the turtle teens while continuing to push the franchise in surprising directions. Led by Christopher Yost (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ’03) and Alan Wan (Rise of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), the series is able to honor the past while still forging its own path. I spoke with the showrunners about how their past experiences informed what they decided to do in Tales of the TMNT.

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Turtles, as teenagers, deal with their new life as heroes while also dealing with the pressures of going to high school in New York City.Release Date 2024-00-00 Cast Brady Noon , Nicolas Cantu , Micah Abbey , Shamon Brown Jr. Seasons 1

‘Mutant Mayhem’s Impact on the TMNT Franchise

MIKE THOMAS: Chris, both of you have tons of experience with this franchise. There hasn’t been a Teenage Ninja Turtles series running over the last 30 years without at least one of you attached to it in some capacity. What made this series different and fresh, and exciting to jump into compared to the others?

CHRIS YOST: I think the answer is the movie. At the end of the day, Mutant Mayhem was so much fun and had so much heart and really put the focus on the turtles as teenagers first and foremost. So, the guys at Point Grey—Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe—they made a super great, super fun movie, and our goal and hope and dream is to build on that and carry over that tone. We’ve been fortunate enough to bring a lot of the cast over with us. That makes it a lot easier to recapture some of that magic and really create a show that’s fun and that has all kinds of action and all kinds of craziness and killing robots and weird sea mutants, but also really delivers on that heart that made everyone fall in love with the first movie.

ALAN WAN: I think you’re gonna pretty much get the exact same answer from me, just poorly worded. But I concur with everything Chris said. Mayhem is definitely our North Star throughout the entire series. We have such a great point of origin to go back to when we make the series.

For you, Alan, was there anything from the previous iterations that you worked on that you carried over? Even though this is a new interpretation of the turtles, you’re still very familiar with those characters in this world.

WAN: 100%. Because the turtles’ DNA, no matter which series you’re working on, they’re there—brothers, family—and those dynamics will never change. Tales didn’t really change that formula a whole lot. It’s just that we highlight the teenage aspect of it the most, and I think the other iterations are all great. I enjoyed working on all of them, but this really brought in a different flavor for someone who has done close to a decade’s worth of Turtles. It’s definitely a fresh take.

I wanted to talk about the art style because even though it’s very much in line with what we see from Mayhem, we do go back to 2D animation. Chris, was there any specific reasoning for that? Did you want to honor the original series by going back to 2D?

YOST: We talked about this with Seth Rogen, and something that got him excited about the style of the show was the kind of sketchbook/notebook quality of it. These are some things you’d see a kid doodling on his notebook in class when he’s not paying attention to a teacher. The vibe of it, the feel of it is supposed to be that made-by-kids aesthetic. So the hope is that this has that kind of punk garage band feel to it.

Reinventing Bishop for ‘Tales of the TMNT’
Image via Paramount+

Gotcha. So I wanted to ask about a specific character right quick. We have Bishop make her debut in this series, and this is a very popular character throughout Turtles lore, but it’s a very unique interpretation of the character in a very different and exciting direction. What was it like having a new spin on the character of Bishop?

WAN: I think what made Bishop’s character unique is that we’re not doing a standard all-evil villain. She’s definitely a lot more complex. There are various dimensions to her, like what motivated her, what changed her, and ultimately what made her realize how she sees things was wrong. I think there’s a full, complete character arc. Actually, in the 10 years that I worked on Turtles, I didn’t get to do Bishop in the Nickelodeon versions of Turtles, so I wasn’t really familiar with the original character, but I do really like our Bishop because there’s definitely a more emotional arc to why she did what she did. I really enjoy telling story that has more character.

YOST: The nice thing is, too, for the people who really love and can’t let go of the 200-year-old soldier who was abducted by aliens and turned into a man in black, I believe the 2003 series, which I wrote extensively on, is available on Paramount+, even as we speak. Again, I think that Mutant Mayhem existed in a much more grounded world, and I think that that version of the character didn’t work quite as well in that world. So, we wanted to do something that flipped the script on it, something different, something that fans haven’t necessarily seen before. I think that this is a pretty fun version of the character that makes sense in the Mutant Mayhem world and ends up, without throwing too much in a not-dissimilar place from old John Bishop.

Giving Each Turtle Their Own Arc Was Always The Goal

I like what you said about flipping it on its head and reinterpreting that for this world. One thing that I really enjoyed watching the series is the turtles are actually split up for once. It’s like, how do they fend for themselves, and how do they grow as individual characters having to not rely on each other as much? Was that a very prominent idea when you were first working on early versions of the show?

YOST: 100%. That was really the most exciting thing about the show, other than continuing the tone, feel, and teenager-ness of the movie. The idea of, “What haven’t fans really seen a lot of before?” And that’s the turtles separating, them being torn apart by this threat and having to deal with the situation on their own to access parts of themselves that they’ve never really tapped into before. You’ve got stuff like Raph having to tell jokes to survive; you’ve got Mikey having to be the responsible one; Donnie having to go full beast mode; and poor Leo, who’s the leader, he doesn’t have anyone to lead—so, what do you do now? Really just challenging the turtles on a deeper down personality level of like, “What are you gonna do? Who are you without your brothers?” And that was the thing that got people most excited about the show.

WAN: To highlight some of those aspects when we were doing the art direction of those shows, we actually color-coded those episodes. If you go back and watch some of the episodes, the Leo episodes are more in a blue tone and the Mikey one is in an orange tone, Raph is in a red tone, and then Donnie is in a purple tone. We really wanted to individually cater to these characters even in the art of it.

That’s very fascinating. I’m gonna have to re-watch it and try and pick up on that because that’s a subtle detail that I just love. So we know that there’s a second movie in production. How close were you guys working with Jeff Roe and Seth Rogen to make sure you guys were in sync? I know you probably couldn’t introduce Shredder in this series. Were there any characters or any plot lines that were off-limits for you?

YOST: It was an ongoing conversation with them. Obviously, they’re working on the movie, but, again, we talk to those guys like every week. We were always checking in. We’re sharing everything with them. We know what they’re doing in the movie. At the end of the day, there’s stuff we don’t want to mess with, but at the same time, the Turtles Universe is pretty big. There are a lot of toys that are still to be played with, and we also get to do new stuff, too. We get to introduce new characters in a few weeks, so it’s been a good balance of fan-favorite characters plus new things as well.

Do you guys have any plans for a second season, or is this a one-and-done deal for you?

YOST: I got all kinds of plans for a second season. Look, again, they’ve been telling turtle stories for 40 years. It’s not gonna be hard to do more. We’ll just have to see what the reaction is. So, everybody should watch on August 9 on Paramount+, and hopefully we’ll get to do more.

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is available to stream on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount+