Starburst hates to be the bearer of bad news but it appears that Paramount’s hotly-anticipated (?) reboot of 1980s cartoon legends Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to be directed by Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles, Wrath of the Titans) and executive-produced by Michael Bay (lots of films with explosions), has come to a juddering halt before it even entered production. Paramount, already struggling to get GI Joe: Retaliation and World War Z fit for public consumption, are anxious to iron out “script problems” before relaunching Michaelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and… er… the other one on a turtle-starved public so have pulled it from its anticipated December 2013 release date.

Paramount are keen to see the movie launch a successful new heroes-in-a-half-shell franchise; Turtle fans will be keeping everything that crosses crossed that Bay’s rumoured story element suggesting that the Turtles are actually revealed to be aliens (instead of ordinary turtles anthropomorphised by radioactive waste, which is much more believable) is going to get the red card treatment as work on the script, to be written by Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’s Andre Nemec and Josh Appelbaum, continues. Optimists expect the new Turtles movie to finally arrive in May 2014.

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