The 2014 reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise didn’t exactly win over critics, but it did make a pile of money at the box office — a fact that made a sequel all but inevitable.
This week, Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, and the follow-up to last year’s re-imagining of the TMNT universe appears to be jam-packed with characters — both heroes and villains — plucked from the Turtles’ colorful history.
Directed by Earth to Echo filmmaker David Green, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows appears to pit the popular heroes in half-shells against a wide variety of villains that will be familiar to fans of the franchise, including Shredder and the ninjas of the Foot Clan, the scientist Baxter Stockman, and the monstrous mutant tag team of Bebop and Rocksteady. Fortunately, the quartet of Turtles finds a new ally in sports-savvy vigilante Casey Jones.
Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough of a threat to everything the Turtles hold dear, the opening scene of the trailer seems to suggest that a threat from another dimension could be on the horizon, too. (Could it be the Dimension X villain Krang?)
Among the returning cast from the 2014 film are Megan Fox and Will Arnett as April O’Neil and Vernon Fenwick, respectively, as well as William Fichtner as Eric Sacks. Alan Ritchson, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, and Noel Fisher also return as Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, the four brothers who don’t let a little thing like being massive, mutant turtles stop them from being the heroes their city needs.
Making their debut in Out of the Shadows will be Tyler Perry (Alex Cross) as Baxter Stockman, WWE star Sheamus as Rocksteady, Gary Anthony Williams (Boston Legal) as Bebop, Brittany Ishibashi (Eagle Eye) as Karai, Arrow star Stephen Amell as Casey Jones, and Brian Tee (The Wolverine) as Shredder.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is scheduled to hit theaters June 3, 2016.
