According to the Hollywood Reporter, pre-production has been shut down on the Ninja Turtles movie reboot. Staff involved with pre-production have been temporarily let go. The movie, itself, has not been cancelled, but has been moved out from December 2013 to a May 2014 release. A weak script is said to be the problem.

Considering the fan outcry that resulted when the revelation surfaced the Turtles would be aliens in this film, I cannot make myself seem surprised by this. It should be stressed that this has nothing to do with that fan outcry, but working with such a foreign concept to such an established brand could not come without it’s own challenges. Not to mention the stigma associated with Michael Bay and reboots, as his company, Platinum Dunes, is set to be producing the film.

This is the third film Paramount has delayed for various reasons. GI Joe: Retaliation and World War Z were both recently pushed out. The TMNT franchise was acquired by Nickelodeon in October of 2009. Nickelodeon and Paramount are both subsidiaries of giant media umbrella corporation, Viacom. The film was set to reinvigorate Nickelodeon after poor recent ratings. All parties involved still hope to accomplish that in May 2014.

The scheduled release date of GI Joe: Retaliation has been moved back nine months from June 29th, 2012 to March 13, 2013. According the Deadline, the reason is reportedly a decision to do a post-production conversion to 3D.

Choice quote:

We’re going to do a conscientious 3D job because we’ve seen how it can better box office internationally, … Jim Cameron did all of Titanic‘s 3D in post — and look how well that movie turned out.

As a fan, I’m utterly disappointed. As a business decision, I think they are foolishly ignoring the positive hype they’ve worked so hard to build around this movie. The move may allow the film to perform better, though, due to fewer blockbuster movies opening around the same time and the better performance of 3D films internationally, added to the increased cost per ticket.

I am curious to see how this year’s JoeCon will procede since it seemed pretty clearly scheduled to coincide very closely with the movie’s release. You can imagine the fan disappointment in that circle. How about Hasbro? They have an entire toy line planned for release this summer with no movie to support it for another nine months. I’m going to go ahead and call this a totally inconsiderate move by Paramount to all of its partners.

Lorenzo Di Bonaventura spoke with MTV at Toy Fair 2012. The big question was whether there would be a new Transformers movie. He replied pretty directly saying a new movie would be coming out in theaters in 2014 with Michael Bay slated to direct. Nothing else is really known yet, but it will be a whole new story. Watch the video above to see what Bonaventura had to say and leave a comment below to tell us what you think.

Updated 2/14/12: Confirmation from Michael Bay

To clarify uninformed reports coming out of Toy Fair – Steven Spielberg and I are working on a whole new re imagining of Transformers, the fourth installment. We have been working on the idea for a few months. I’m excited about where it’s headed.

It is worth noting neither the press release nor Bay’s own statements confirm he will direct, but do confirm he is working on the production.

Press Release from Paramount after the jump. [Read the rest of this entry…]