Movies With Butter

Paramount has pushed back the release date of their live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot to May 16, 2014 from December 25, 2013.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the script is the source of the problem, so the delay will allow them to work out the trouble spots.

Deadline says, what THR euphemistically called script problems are actually, at its core, budget problems. The studio wants to trim $10-$20 million off the total to bring it down to $125 million. This usually means rewriting the script to get rid of effects-heavy scenes.

Producer Michael Bay has previously revealed that in this new origin story, the Turtles are of an alien race instead of mutating to what they are after being exposed to a green goo.

Wrath of the Titans' Jonathan Liebesman is attached to direct from a script by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec.

Production was originally schedule for October this year, but according to Deadline's sources, the start date has been pushed back 10 weeks.

With the exception of the first movie, none of the TMNT movies made over $100 at the domestic box office, so Paramount executives should be thinking twice about funding a high-priced reboot. The $125 million budget still sounds a tad on the high side for a TMNT movie though. Let's see how this plays out.

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