The Ninja Turtles Flip Over to Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon, a division of Viacom and a sister company to Paramount (a company that seems to be grabbing up everything in sight lately), has grabbed the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The rights were originally held by Mirage Group and 4Kids Entertainment.

This is great news for the successful franchise, because Paramount is now planning to push a new Turtles film to theaters by 2012, with one of the producers of 300, Scott Mednick, behind the film. It’s unknown whether the film will be a CGI affair like the most recent TMNT was, but I hope they’ll go the route of the original films and learn from Where the Wild Things Are’s example.

Nickelodeon will of course be developing a CG animated show for their network, which will probably be a coup for their programming, as the turtles have never been unpopular with the masses.

This was a hefty deal for the studio, at a pricey $60 million. That’s $60 million for characters that have existed in pop culture for 25 years in comic books, cartoon shows, and movies.