COWABUNGA! These 'Ninja Turtles' are still in a New York state of mind

Want to know what's just as reflective of New York City as the Yankees, Broadway and sometimes iffy street food? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, those pop-culture favorites and heroes in a half shell who are currently in the Big Apple filming a follow-up to their 2014 Hollywood hit. Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and Leonardo (who wears his NYC love via a ubiquitous button) invited us to stop by the set of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel Friday and hang out with their human pals (a returning Megan Fox and Will Arnett, plus newcomers such as Arrow star Stephen Amell).

We're saving most of what we learned until closer to next June when the film arrives in theaters — plus we don't want Raph mad at us for giving away too much! — but we did talk to folks about the importance of filming the new movies in NYC.

Screenwriter Josh Appelbaum points out that New York has always been a part of TMNT lore, going to back to its origins in the 1984 indie comic book:
"Batman was Gotham City, Superman was Metropolis – Turtles is one of the few where it is New York City and calling it by name. So to be able to go to Madison Square Garden and Grand Central Station and Hayden Planetarium … it so speaks to the spirit and history of the franchise."


New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles director Dave Green (Earth to Echo), a fan since he was a kid, feels that the formidable foursome is also different from Spider-Man and other superheroes in that they traverse the sewers of New York City rather than its streets and rooftops:
"The Turtles, because they’re ninjas and also mutants, they have to live their lives underground and in the shadows. And New York has this immense subterranean universe with subway systems and the gas and the power lines. When we were scouting, we looked at all these little nooks and crannies of the city that are the city behind the city."
And the city loves them right back. Amell, who joins the movie series as hockey-masked vigilante Casey Jones, recalls arriving to shoot one scene near Times Square and encountering a bus full of sightseers:
"There were flashbulbs everywhere. I had no choice but to go, 'Hiiiiiiii!' There's a certain energy about the city, and the second movie in particular is really leaning on how rooted these characters are in New York and what it means."

What New York City also means for Mikey? Great pizza.