Nickelodeon the New Owner of 'TMNT'

The heroes in a half-shell have been around for a quarter-century, and while it's quite obvious that the green crime fighters have no intentions of slowing down, they will be surfing the sewers under a slightly different banner from now on. Nickelodeon, home to countless kid brands of the action-adventure fare, is dipping its toes farther into the pond for boy's action titles with an outright purchase of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles intellectual property rights. A full acquisition from The Mirage Group and 4Kids Entertainment, Inc., the deal will see Nick as the newest partner to Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael.

"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," Cyma Zarghami, President, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group, commented. "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."

Tales of the TMNT, issue #49
Printed by Mirage (08/2008)
By D. Berger & J. Lawson

An animated television series from the late 1980s through to the early 1990s, then revived again later for a more cohesive rekindling within the past ten years for Saturday morning action viewers and CG-interested moviegoers, TMNT is a brand with a life all its own. Comic book enthusiasts are quick to point to the legacy of comic books published over the years, beginning with Mirage Publishing's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1984), printed for nine consecutive years and espousing several storylines for slightly older readers. Longtime fans of the property in its many forms are naturally hoping that many of the brand's creative components over the years, comics artists and writers for example, will remain.

A multi-platform entity if there ever was one, TMNT lives through film, television, home video, action figures, videogames, and everywhere else a key boy's title should.

The brand's price tag of $60 million is an aggregate purchase price, but Nickelodeon is already churning the gears on where to take the pizza-devouring ninja terrapins next.

Paramount Pictures, a Viacom-owned division, is planning to distribute the next TMNT film in 2012. Meanwhile, Nickelodeon is busy developing a computer animated television series, also tentatively slated to debut in 2012. According to sources, the current television animation will continue to air on The CW Network's Saturday-mornings through August 2010. It again bears mentioning that Nickelodeon has purchased the intellectual property rights to the entire brand, meaning that all merchandising and broadcasting rights will eventually transition over to Nickelodeon.

"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 with Nickelodeon," Adam Goodman, President, Paramount Pictures, stated.

on Nickelodeon: Nickelodeon (www.Nick.com), now in its 30th year, is the number-one entertainment brand for kids. It has built a diverse, global business by putting kids first in everything it does. The company includes television programming and production in the United States and around the world, plus consumer products, online, recreation, books and feature films.