At M-Net Movies we’re big fans of the Ninja Turtles, so we scrounged up some awesome facts about TMNT.
- At the time the original movie was the highest-grossing indie-film, making $201 million at the box office.
- The actors who played the turtles in the ‘90s had cameos in the first movie without the turtle suits. Josh Pais (Raphael) is a passenger in the back of a taxi; Michelan Sisti (Michelangelo) plays a pizza delivery guy; Leif Tilden (Donatello) is the Foot messenger that meets April in the subway station; and David Forman (Leonardo) plays a gang member during Casey Jones' fight with Tatsu.
- Josh Pais was the only actor to physically and vocally portray the same turtle. The others had their voices swapped out.
- The original movie is set in New York City, but mostly filmed in North Carolina.
- They don’t quite beat Star Wars on the toy front, but they still did pretty well. Between 1988 and 1992 about $1.1 billion worth of turtle toys were sold.
- At one stage there was a female turtle named Venus de Milo, who featured in the series Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started as a comic book in the ‘80s and Michelangelo was the first turtle to be drawn.
- When the TV series started in 1987, the show was renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in several countries due to censoring issues.
- Jim Henson created the turtle costumes in the ‘90s, but was reportedly unhappy with the violence of the film.
- It’s no surprise that the biggest pizza joints in the States battled it out for tie-in stakes. Pizza Hut eventually secured a $20 million marketing campaign, but Domino’s ended up being the pizza of choice for the turtles in the movie.
Now that you know more about the Turtles get ready to place an order for pizza and enjoy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on M-Net Movies.