In recent decades, everything having to do with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been rebooted. The comics, films, TV shows, and toy lines have all been reimagined several times over, each with some updates and changes to appeal to new generations. But now Nickelodeon, which bought the TMNT back in 2009, is rebooting something that hasn’t been touched since the very early 1990s — something so notoriously bizarre that I honestly never thought we’d ever see it again.
Announced by Variety this morning, Nickelodeon’s parent company Paramount is partnering with Maximum Entertainment to create Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live on Stage!, which will arrive on North American stages sometime in 2027. Maximum Entertainment is known for a wide array of stage productions, from the Titanic parody Titanique to & Juliet, a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
According to the announcement, “The new production will follow Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo from their comic book origins to becoming global pop culture icons, battling familiar villains along the way.” It also says, “The production will blend martial arts choreography, parkour, hip-hop dance battles, projection technology and humor to reimagine the franchise as a fast-paced spectacle for all ages.”
Most likely, the show will differ greatly from the original TMNT stage show, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells, which debuted at Radio City Music Hall in September 1990. In it, the TMNT decide to lay down their weapons and pursue a music career instead, so they launch a concert tour with Leonardo on bass, Raphael on saxophone, Donatello on electric keyboard, and Michelangelo on lead guitar.
Of course, the show wouldn’t work if it was entirely free of ninja action, so Shredder crashes the set because of his newfound hatred of music. He even sings a whole song entitled “I Hate Music” (the irony of which seems to escape him).
Aside from a few legit bangers in the track list like “Pizza Power” and the titular “Coming Out of Our Shells,” the stage show was objectively terrible in every way. With bad costumes, corny dialogue and a near-nonsense plot, it was purely aimed at undiscriminating kids and the wallets of their parents. However, for those who grew up during “Turtle-Mania” of the 1980s and 1990s, Coming Out of Their Shells is legitimately beloved.
While the show is hilariously cheesy, it came about during a time when the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was a Saturday morning phenomenon and the first movie was a blockbuster hit in theaters. Store shelves were packed with Ninja Turtles action figures while Burger King had TMNT toys with their kids’ meals. Turtles were also on countless T-shirts, sneakers, lunchboxes, school supplies, Christmas decorations, and anything else you can think of. Yet, despite the depths of this marketing blitz, nothing was weirder than Coming Out of Their Shells. It was peak Turtle-Mania, which is why so many TMNT fans have nostalgia for it.
I cannot imagine Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Live on Stage! will even come close to Coming Out of Their Shells’ level of absurdity, where the Turtles basically abandon their essential premise for a life of music. While I wholeheartedly welcome Nickelodeon’s efforts to continue to introduce the TMNT to new generations, there’s just no way kids today would sit through 90 minutes of something that objectively strange.