Nickelodeon has just paid $60 million for the global rights to The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Viacom company is buying the rights from Mirage Studios and brand management company 4Kids Entertainment. Mirage Studios is the company created by Turtles co-creators Peter A. Laird and Kevin B. Eastman. Laird bought out Eastman in a series of deals between 2000 and 2008.
Laird writes he “has sold all intellectual property rights to the TMNT franchise to Nickelodeon. So Nick now owns the TMNT lock, stock, and barrel.” Laird, however, did “retain the right to publish up to 18 TMNT comics per years should he choose to do so.” Laird also discusses his feelings and reasons for the sale in this blog post.
Announcing the deal, Paramount President Adam Goodman said “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a property that maintains a very passionate global fan base, is rich with opportunity for a tentpole movie and is exactly the right property for us to work together on with Nickelodeon.”
Already in the planing stages is a new Turtles feature film, which Paramount will be bringing to the big screen in 2011 or 2012. Scott Mednick (300, Where the Wild Things Are) is slated to produce it, with Galen Walker, who produced the 2007 computer-animated TMNT. John Fusco (The Forbidden Kingdom) is already attached to write the screenplay.
At the same time, Nickelodeon is developing a CG-animated TV series, also scheduled to premiere in 2012. Nickelodeon, which also acquired all merchandising rights to the Turtles, will continue to work with its toy partner, Playmates Toys.
Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group President Cyma Zarghami said “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shares a comedic sensibility with the Nickelodeon DNA, with added layers of action and fantasy that have kept this property an evergreen favorite with multiple generations of audiences. We are extremely happy to have the opportunity to be able to focus on this property and creatively re-introduce it to a new generation of kids.”
The current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated television series—which has been airing on the CW since 2003, and is jointly produced by 4Kids and Mirage Studios—will run through next August.
Variety calls the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “one of the most successful franchises in the past 25 years given the myriad TV series, films, videogames and toy lines based on the sewer-dwelling characters.” The characters were created by Peter A. Laird and Kevin B. Eastman, and first appeared in a self-published comic book in 1984.
Viacom is the corporate parent of both Paramount and Nickelodeon. Viacom announced the deal in two press releases: Nickelodeon Acquires Global Rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Mirage Group Sells Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Nickelodeon.