Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mirage Studios Sells Out to Nickelodeon

Say it isn't so, but under the radar without much of a to do, Nickelodeon has purchased the rights to the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Mirage Studios for 60 million dollars. Loyal fans of the series are worried that Nickelodeon will take it to a vanilla plane for the turtles in the half shell. The turtles began in comics created by Eastman and Laird and often portrayed them as sometime crude, pizza eating and butt kicking heroes.

Recently through several cartoons and other venues the turtles are taken on a more commercial kid friendly role. This is alienated some of the older fan base, but, it seems to have not worked for Mirage Studios. Mirage had owned the rights to the turtles since their creation in 1984. Earlier this year, Mirage Studios had planned to do a live-action feature film and even held auditions for it.

Nickelodeon has now amounts that will partner up with Paramount pictures and already are planning a feature film for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to be released in 2012 and will also release a computer graphics animated television series that same year. This is big news for turtle fans everywhere, but, they are still uncertain as to what version of the turtles they will be getting.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles skyrocketed to fame in the late 1980s and continued well into the early 1990s. The story revolves around four mutant turtles who are based in the sewers of New York, trained in Ninjitsu and battle evil doers.

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird reportedly came up with the idea of the turtles during an evening of brainstorming in Dover, New Hampshire in 1984. They put together money they receive from a tax refund and a loan from Kevin's uncle and published one comic that was meant to be a parody of the most popular ones in the 1980s. They had no idea that they just created a megahit.

Mirage Studios published the oversized magazine using cheap newsprint and black-and-white artwork and only ran 3,000 copies. These 3,000 copies have become a major collectors item over the years. Through clever marketing and ad placed in the Comic Buyers Guide #547, Mirage was able to cause enough buzz about the comic to make it a hit. The studio got its name because Eastman and Laird decided to parody themselves and the term "Mirage" came up because they had no formal training or background in publishing.

Nickelodeon seems to have high hopes for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and is doing its best to promote them by working on the new film and television series they hope to revive it is as one of most successful animated franchises there is out there.

Sources:
Tatiana Siegel, Ninja Turtles Move to Nickelodeon, Variety