‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Speak Out about Set Drama with Director

The cast of 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have recently hinted that there was some set drama with director Jonathan Liebesman.

Last year’s film was a big-screen adaptation of the popular cartoon, starring Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Pete Ploszek and Jeremy Howard as the infamous amphibians. Megan Fox also appeared in the film, but it was widely panned by critics.

That hasn’t stopped the guys returning to the story with a sequel, which is due out in 2016 and has a new director in the shape of David Green. It seems the actors are happy that things have been switched up.

“Kindness,” Jeremy, who stars as Donatello, responded when ScreenRant asked about the main difference between the directors.

Pete, who plays Leonardo, added: “Well, I’ll put it this way – Dave Green is 32. He grew up with these guys (the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Not that Liebesman was much older, but he is from South Africa…

“With Dave, what was communicated to us early on was how much of a fan he is, and really gets it. I think he was able to watch the first movie – like we all were as an audience – and see, OK that works, that doesn’t work. I love that ‘let’s do more of that’. ‘I connected to that’ or ‘I didn’t connect to that’. So, that’s where he has a leg up this time around, as anyone would coming back to a sequel.”

Noel, portraying Michelangelo, particularly liked that David wanted the stars to explore how the turtles, who are brothers, get on. That’s not to say returning to set was easy though, with Alan, who plays Raphael, admitting he approached the idea with extreme caution.

“It feels good (to be back). I got to be honest, I was a little nervous about coming back because the first run of this – the first trial run of the first film – was pretty tough,” he said. “Pretty tough.”

The group was quizzed on what this meant, and again implied all was not well behind the scenes.

“Dealing with the politics – not us so directly but seeing it – it just made for a really tough shoot,” Alan said.

Pete added: “I think that has informed our approach to this one though in the sense that I think we’re all very aware of the movie we made last time. What worked. What didn’t work. When you see what made it and what didn’t make it (into the final cut), it really informs your choices as an actor.”