Seth Rogen says his new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie won't be just a typical action film.
In an interview with the A.V. Club, the Golden Globe nominee, 40, listed his movies that show a deeper side to him than viewers may realize, including Superbad and This Is The End, as well as his upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot.
"We found a way to make it deeply personal," he said. "It's a teenage movie, we're putting a lot of our own feelings — of awkwardness and insecurity and a desire to belong and be accepted and all that — into the movie."
"And as I sit around with the other people working on [the film], I'm like, 'We found a way to care about this,' which is great," Rogen continued.
After Rogen was first announced to produce the movie in 2020, he debuted the title, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, in August with a wall mural of the movie title along with its release date. The movie will be CG-animated, following in the style of the TV series, according to Variety.
He previously told Collider in 2020 that the new movie would focus on the "teenage" aspect of the iconic TMNT characters Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo.
"As a lifelong fan of Ninja Turtles, weirdly the 'Teenage' part of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was always the part that stuck out to me the most," Rogen said, adding: "The idea of kind of honing in on that element was really exciting to us. I mean, not disregarding the rest, but really using that as kind of a jumping off point for the film."
Rogen is no stranger to working with emotion. He said at the 10th annual Hilarity for Charity that working on his recent film The Fabelmans was particularly emotional, especially for director Steven Spielberg.
"It's very directly based on his life and pretty much everything that happens in the movie is something that happened to him," Rogen said. "As we were shooting, I'd be like, 'Did this happen in real life?' and the answer was 'yes' a hundred percent of the time."
The Canadian actor said it was a humbling experience for him being able to collaborate with such a renowned and experienced director. "It was very flattering and validating for someone like [Spielberg] to even know who I am, nonetheless think I could help their film or that I would be additive to their film," Rogen said.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is scheduled to premiere Aug. 4, 2023.
