14 DAY TRIAL // It has been announced that cable-television network Nickelodeon is now the owner of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. This basically means that it holds the rights to creating television content, full-length movies and video games based on the characters. The official statement made by the network has not mentioned whether comic books are also covered, but they should be given the usual structure of franchise rights.
Cyma Zarghami, who is the president of the Kids and Family section at Nickelodeon, says that, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shares a comedic sensibility with the Nickelodeon DNA, with added layers of action and fantasy that have kept this property an evergreen favorite with multiple generations of audiences. We are extremely happy to have the opportunity to be able to focus on this property and creatively re-introduce it to a new generation of kids.”
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series has always been popular with video gamers. Since 1984, about 20 of them have been released to varying degrees of critical and commercial success. They were produced by Konami most of the times and, recently, Ubisoft has taken up the mantle and has released a well-received remake of the classic Turtles in Time and a Smash-Up brawler that arrived only on the Nintendo Wii. The turtles are a natural fit for video games because of their varied moves, simple, black-and-white moral universe and interesting group mechanics.
Nickelodeon can count on other Viacom subsidiaries like MTV Games to develop games based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It would be interesting to see the characters envisioned as LEGO characters or perhaps their being given a mature treatment in the way Batman has been recently portrayed in Arkham Asylum. We might even get to see them as playable characters in the Rock Band series.