For months, fans have been seething over the continued news updates on his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle reboot film. With each new announcement, fans grew angrier and angrier. We have even posted several angry articles about everything from the fact that they turtles would no longer be mutants, but aliens and, recently, that Megan Fox had been cast as April O’Neil.
Well, we were fooled. In what seems to be one of the most elaborate Hollywood April Fool’s jokes ever played, it seems like the whole thing was his joke just to get passionate fans talking about the reboot. In an interview with Variety earlier today, he had this to say.
“The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film has been in the works for a long time now and I know how important a show and comic book it has always been to the fans. We could never do anything as ridiculous as making them aliens instead of mutants.
Fans can rest assured, we have learned a lot of lessons, both good and bad, about dealing with heavily nostalgic licenses while making the first three Transformers films. You are going to see that, not only in the TMNT film, which will definitely be about four, pizza loving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their Sensai, Splinter, but also in the upcoming Transformers films starring Mark Whalberg.”
As to how he came up with the idea, he credits the first G.I. Joe movie from a few years back.
“When news first hit that they were dropping the “Real American Hero” from GI Joe and making it an international fighting force for their first film, fans exploded and it made international news. I knew that if we could harness that kind of emotion, everyone would be talking about the new turtle movie.”
In regards to casting, specifically Megan Fox as April O’Neil, here’s what he had to say.
“Most of the casting announcements that we’ve released are true. The four great actors who we have as the Turtles, they are locked and are already in training for the role. As far as Megan Fox, no, that was part of the joke. ”
“We were actually nervous about that announcement. Megan Fox was fine as the street wise sex symbol of Transformers, but we didn’t think anyone would actually believe us when we announced that she’d been cast as April O’Neil, one of the most intelligent and tenacious characters in the series.
Fans were so angry that we almost pulled the plug on the joke that day, but we decided to hold out just a little bit longer for April, 1.”
Source: Variety
We really hate to say this, but….