Ninja Turtles’ Casey Jones Almost Had His Own Solo Film

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been around for decades, and through all the various interpretations, April O’Neil and Casey Jones have been their first (if not only) human allies. Between the two of them, it’s April who tends to get the spotlight the most, and Casey tends to show up later in the story. But Paramount was apparently at one point considering giving the hockey mask-wearing vigilante his own space via a solo film.

Jason Eisener, director of Hobo With a Shotgun and the recently released
Kids vs. Aliens, revealed as such via Twitter on Friday. He claimed that back in 2018, he pitched a standalone film to Paramount focused on Casey. That movie would’ve featured Shredder’s daughter Karai and eventually Raphael, who Eisener said would’ve taken visual inspiration from the 1990 film. What’s more, the director released a tone reel for the hypothetical film, set to “I” by Dio and featuring footage from The Raid 2, Stranger Things, Goon, and the original TMNT movie.

While the movie never got made, the tone reel paints an interesting (and brutal) picture of what a Casey Jones flick could’ve been like. And it sounds like it could’ve happened had the stars aligned just a little bit more. Responding to Eisener on Twitter, actor Joe Manganiello revealed he’d talked about playing Casey for Paramount back during the 2010s. (Presumably, this was before Paramount opted to do the two live-action reboot movies where Casey was played by Stephen Amell.) “I would’ve said yes to this in a heartbeat,” Manganiello said.

Paramount’s got an animated TMNT movie from Seth Rogen in the works, but since we’re adding some grit to kids properties these days…maybe a Casey Jones solo movie isn’t entirely out of the question?

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