As a kid, I was a big fan of the Eastman and Laird TMNT comics. As a youngster who grew up in the Star Wars and Karate Kid era, and who loved science fiction and RPGs, my love of this franchise was pretty much a given from the get go. And over the years, I and many other adolescents were excited to see these characters adapted to television and the big screen, with mixed results. And now, true to form, Michael Bay has chosen to tap into this latest reservoir of nostalgic energy for the sake of profit.

And after a few years of development and lots or preliminary hype (mainly that the script sucked and Bay claiming it wasn’t his fault),  Paramount Pictures has announced the movie’s release. It will be premiering on August 8th, 2014 (just in time for the summer blockbuster season) and will star Alan Ritchson, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, Noel Fisher, Will Arnett, Danny Woodburn, William Fichtner, and Megan Fox in the role of investigative reporter April O’Neil.

Rather than direct, Bay has chosen to produce this baby and the leave the behind-the-camera work to Jonathan Liebesman, who brought us such action porn movies as Battle: Los Angeles, Clash of the Titans, and Bay’s reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And between Fox, the eye-candy cinematography, and the slow-motion/fast-motion action shots, it looks to me like this is yet another campy action flick on par with Bay’s Transformer series.

And I’m just assuming (based on past experience with Bay movies) that the turtles themselves will all be terribly cheesy and borderline racist caricatures, with at least one sounding very much like a punchy, sass-talking black dude. Also, is anyone surprised to see Fox here? Didn’t she burn all her bridges with Bay after she compared him to a Nazi? Just saying… Enjoy the trailer: