“Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” stars Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon appeared at Comic-Con to preview the teen turtles’ latest adventure — this time a 12-episode series for Paramount+.
The quartet (who reprise their roles from the 2023 movie “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”) were joined onstage by executive producers and showrunners Chris Yost (“The Mandalorian,” “Thor: Ragnorok”) and Alan Wan (“Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and the 2012 series “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”), as well as Alanna Ubach, who joins the crew as the villainous Bishop.
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“It’s an honor to not only be playing a female antagonist, but to be asked to be a part of something that is such a pop culture phenomenon and something that has had so much staying power for the past 40 years,” Ubach told the Comic-Con crowd, saying that she’d been looking to voice a villain because those are the characters that her son, Thomas, is most intrigued by. “I’m really stoked to be playing, finally, a bad lady. I hope you dig it, little guy.” (The panel also happened to coincide with his seventh birthday, so the crowd gave him a “Happy Birthday” shoutout. “We’ll never be able to top that, buddy,” she joked.)
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During the panel, Ninja Turtle fans were treated to a preview of Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey’s latest adventures, as the story bridges the gap between “Mutant Mayhem” and its planned sequel. Abbey, Brown, Cantu and Noon each selected a clip to showcase their characters’ individual journey, as the brothers find themselves taking on their enemies solo instead of a team, which presents new challenges.
“When we first heard talking about the series, we sit down with Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and said, ‘What can we do different? It can not be more of the same.’ The idea of splitting the Turtles up came up — really digging into their characters and seeing what they’re made of when they’re not with their brothers,” Yost recalled. “It puts them in a situation where they have to kind of stretch and grow and be something they’ve never necessarily had to be before . Each one of them has to change a little bit over the course of the adventure.”
There was also an extended clip that allowed Ubach’s Bishop takes center stage, previewing her plot to “exterminate” the brothers using her troop of mechazoids (murderous robots), but it doesn’t go quite the way she planned.
Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”) also returns to voice April O’Neil in the series, which also sees Pete Davidson as a guest star (voicing Rod, who has ties to Bishop), plus new characters like Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Pigeon Pete, Timothy Olyphant as Goldfin, Jillian Bell as Lee the Eel, and Danny Trejo as Mustang Sally.
But the big reveal was the opening title sequence, which present a taste of what our heroes in a half shell are up against in these new episodes. The theme song is composed by Emmy nominated composer Matt Mahaffey, known for his work on “Sanjay and Craig,” “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.”
Watch the title sequence below:
