The Ninja Turtles are on the move

Clearly hoping that there's life in the shells yet, Nickelodeon has swooped in and splashed $60 million to buy the rights for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The company is planning to essentially re-introduce the characters yet again (despite their last big relaunch happening in, er, 2002), with a CG cartoon set to air in 2012 and a new film in development with Paramount.

There's no exact info on what this means for the TMNT film that has ben developing under the stewardship of producers Scott Mednick and Galen Walker, who had hired writer John Fusco to punch out a Batman Begins-style re-working of the characters to take them back to their roots.

Promising both a blend of live-action and CG turtles, the producers had also mentioned that they were charting a path back to the darker tone of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's original comics.

Whether Paramount and Nickelodeon will want to tread that path remains to be seen - but we hope so, as it sounds like a smart move.

On TV, however, expect the usual colourful chaos. "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," said Nickelodeon president Cyma Zarghami.

They clearly are still popular. But popular enough to spend $60 million on?

[Source: THR ]

Do you want more Turtle action? Or should they be pensioned off?