Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Exclusive Posters and Video

There have been many animated and live-action incarnations of TMNT over the decades, but the new animated movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem aims to distinguish itself by leaning even more into the mutant element than ever before and by casting actual teens as the Turtles, something that, as director Jeff Rowe told IGN at the film’s press junket, has “insanely never been done before.”

As shown in this exclusive behind-the-scenes video (which you can watch via the player above or the embed below), teen actors Micah Abbey (Donatello), Shamon Brown Jr. (Michelangelo), Nicolas Cantu (Leonardo), and Brady Noon (Raphael) recorded together in order to establish the camaraderie among the Ninja Turtles. Voice actors traditionally record their roles by themselves.

 “I think we go deeper emotionally than maybe other previous iterations. We really spent a lot of time focusing on the characters and making them lovable and relatable and feel authentic,” Rowe said.

IGN can also exclusively debut 17 new character posters (scroll through the gallery below) featuring all the characters in the movie, including Seth Rogen’s Bebop, John Cena’s Rocksteady, Jackie Chan’s Splinter, and Ice Cube’s Superfly. 

Mutant Mayhem marks the big screen debut for many TMNT characters, such as Mondo Gecko (voiced by Paul Rudd) and Genghis Frog (voiced by Hannibal Buress). Rowe said the classic toys were a big reason why they appear in the film.

“We included them just because they’re cool, just because we like them. So much of my connection to the Ninja Turtles was the original toy line, and I remember the back of toy packages having 20 different mutants on it, and each design was so inventive and creative and told a little story about the character that when we were designing characters for the movie, we’re like, ‘Well, let’s see what this character looks like. Let’s try this.’ And then we started writing them into the movie just because they looked cool.”

Speaking of looking cool, Mutant Mayhem’s animation style is distinct from past incarnations of TMNT as well as from the signature styles of Disney-Pixar and DreamWorks Animation. Rowe credits the critical and commercial success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for convincing Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies to let them try a new approach to visualizing the Ninja Turtles and their world. 

“It incentivized studios to take risks that being visually different and unique is a benefit critically and financially, and it really opened a lot of doors for other films,” Rowe said.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem opens in theaters August 2.