Despite that sacrificial ritual we did a while back to try and ensure otherwise, the Michael Bay-produced “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie continues to insist on being an actual thing. Our hopes were raised when the film was shut down a while back due to budgetary issues, but it was retooled and is now ticking towards the start of production with Megan Fox cast as female lead April O’Neil a while back.
And now it has its first actual Turtle, as Deadline reveals that actor Alan Ritchson has joined the cast as Raphael. Ritchson’s a model and former “American Idol” contestant, whose acting roles include playing superhero Aquaman on TV’s “Smallville” and being used as a body double on mo-cap picture “Beowulf,” which presumably is what helped qualify him for this part. He’s about to be more familiar, though, as he has the role of Gloss in the upcoming “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”
Raphael (who had the red bandana, and uses sai as a weapon) is the brashest and most aggressive of the four turtles, so we guess that sort of makes sense. We imagine the other turtles will fall into place soon enough, and we suspect that they’ll be of about the same star wattage as Ritchson, while “Battle: Los Angeles” and “Wrath Of The Titans” director Jonathan Liebesman is at the helm, so if nothing else, the film will probably be incredibly awful. The film will open on May 20th, 2014.