Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Co-Creator Kevin Eastman Shares His Favorite TMNT Movie Moments [Exclusive Interview]

Do you have a favorite moment from any Turtles adaptation, in either TV or film?

Man, there’s so many wonderful, iconic little bits and pieces, from the original Steve Barron[-directed moment], “Pizza dude’s got 30 seconds,” to the new film, I’m just thinking [about] Jackie Chan going, “You’re freaking me out!” as Splinter. There’s so many wonderfully iconic moments throughout the years that we’ve been lucky enough to have, with so many unique and wonderful visions.

Have there been any adaptations of the Ninja Turtles that you were either aware of or involved with yourself that were never actually made?

No. Well, not really. I’m just a little trepidatious only in that we were developing a fourth movie back in the early days, which included the creation of a fifth turtle named Kirby, and that evolved into a live-action series when we added a female turtle, which was my idea — Venus. No, so there’s nothing that I wish we’d done yet that hasn’t been done. So many wonderful explorations and so many Turtle ideas far beyond what I ever imagined originally, for sure.

Gotcha. Yeah, I was just curious if you’d ever heard a pitch for an adaptation that was so wild that you were like, “What is going on?”

It was only that — and I know it exists somewhere — but back in the earliest days, [before] the first Turtle movie, there was a pitch from Roger Corman’s company, New World Pictures, which was like, I think it had a bunch of comedians like Sam Kinison and a couple others that were going to be the turtles’ voice [and] just basically paint their faces green and wear a shell. But it was a really low budget, crazy idea that Peter and I were not impressed with [laughs], so we said no. And wisely so, I guess.