Despite the less than stellar reviews, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles proved to be a hit at the box office, raking in $65 million in the U.S. and over $93 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Naturally, the announcement of a sequel followed shortly thereafter, and now the director and producers of the film have hinted at some of the elements that might be in store for the heroes in half-shells in their next big-screen adventure.
After Variety confirmed that a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was planned for June 3, 2016, speculation about exactly where the franchise would take the Turtles has run rampant, with many fans pondering the introduction of popular characters such as Casey Jones, Rocksteady, or the alien Krang to the new, rebooted universe.
In an interview with Screen Rant that occurred before the film’s premiere, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles director Jonathan Liebesman and producers Bradley Fuller and Andrew Form hinted that discussions involving the brain-like villain Krang and his alien homeworld of Dimension X have already taken place.
“F–k yes!” said Liebesman when asked whether the film’s creative team would ever go sci-fi and introduce the brain-shaped, would-be conquerors of Earth who hail from a region known as Dimension X. “I would love to.”
In the original comics and cartoon series, the company responsible for creating the mutagen that transformed the Turtles was eventually revealed to be working with alien visitors from Dimension X. Their leader, Krang, frequently teamed up with the Turtles’ arch enemy, Shredder, in diabolical schemes to take over Earth.
“We’ve talked about those worlds already,” revealed Fuller when asked about the possibility of integrating that narrative thread into the current, rebooted universe.
“There are scripts that have been written for this movie that integrated those worlds into it already,” added Form.
As for why the alien story didn’t make the final cut of this film, Liebesman explained that the Dimension X elements were “a bit too unfocused” for the first film.
Here’s hoping the introduction of Krang does indeed happen, though, as it means we’re that much closer to getting a live-action, big-screen version of Muckman and Joe Eyeball.